the metaphysics of literality

scott just asked me if vanity (or pride or talking about pride, whatever. this isn't his blog) was obnoxious in a blog.
i told him no, of course.
(i won't go into that because... i don't feel like it.)

and then i realized that my blog is probably where i am most vain (which is really kind of pathetic)

scott hates links.
scott and i have fights about links.
that is also pathetic. (and my theme song plays: "riding on city buses for a hobby is sad...")

i just told scott how much i like linking in my blogs, most especially (in the supreme act of blogging vanity) to my own older posts.
take, for example, the following chain of events.
in reverse chronological order (which, i might add, i have already posted about):

1- http://barcelona-calling.blogspot.com/2007/02/meet-me-there-in-blue.html
when you click on the title of this post it takes you to the song the title came from, "in circles" by sunny day real estate.
within the post i refer to an earlier post ("walking in circles"):
2-http://barcelona-calling.blogspot.com/2007/01/mystery-in-time-of-certainty-i-wish-i.html
this post is based on real life events. i really was just circling and circling around on the train platform. and not for the first time, i might add. yikes.
the link here ("circles"), again, goes to an earlier post where, interestingly, (if you read the comments and follow the discussion back up) i confess to spiralling inward:
3-http://barcelona-calling.blogspot.com/2006/11/cant-wait-until-you-cant-wait-til-you.html
if you click on the title of this post it takes you to a contemporary post on my happy blog

3a-http://happyment.blogspot.com/2006/11/but-what-if-they-like-it.html
which in turn (clicking on the title) takes you to another contemporary post on my blog with ren (i'm seriously letting way too much out about how sick i am):

3b-http://renandjo.blogspot.com/2006/11/and-lock-us-in-cannery-with-your.html which finally, in a move so brilliant i'm still excited about it and sad that no one caught on to the joke, takes you (again, by clicking the title) to a video of owen pallet (as final fantasy) playing the "title song", as it were, which is a direct reference to arcade fire whom joey and i are going to see i boston in may. (but not just playing, playing along with a overhead projector/transparency/craziness no one will ever understand):

3c-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC2nKcB-S2s

towards the end of this post you find yet another link to an earlier post ("circles"), which is the key to my philosophizing. it is a full-circle moment in my life, where, yet again, i realize that playing on the internet is my refuge from a solitary life:
4-http://barcelona-calling.blogspot.com/2006/06/theres-solitary-man-crying.html
and finally, the only not so self-involved link in the bunch, is a link to a dance step, the "gypsy" which, in so many ways, is an effective representation of my insanity:

3d-http://www.srcf.ucam.org/round/dances/elements#0.2.GSUMN2.2PL4XM.I4SFGD.61

santas y buenas

meet me there in the blue

(the player won't work, so click on the title to hear the song)
so jo brings up a good point.
i struggle for a way to describe a spiral that winds outwards, that gets bigger instead of smaller.
surely, this is a fault of my vocabulary.

jo offers "concentric circles" and i wonder to myself what the best way to represent my walking in circles would be.

here are concentric circles:

while in my mind my original thought looks something like this:

but what if it's really like this?

in a crowd it's hard to spot him. or: she's a single face in the crowd.

for a long time i wanted to be a passionate personality. the kind of person who defies ambivalence, those people who embody the law of excluded middle.
“she’s the kind of person that either you love her or you hate her. there is no middle ground.”
the appeal of igniting such fervent responses was very keen. "any reaction is better than no reaction," i thought.

i have spent much of my life being invisible.
even my friends would sign my yearbook: “ you’re so smart. and quiet.”
at maximum, that’s all anyone ever knew about me.
at rock bottom were the boys in 7th grade who when i answered a question stared at me in disbelief: “you can talk?! i thought you were mute.”

i grew to hate being called smart. i grew to hate the number “34” (which is now only ever presented to my remembrance by one Julia who knows i hate it and forces it upon me merely to annoy.)
i am smart. school is my thing, it’s where i feel most comfortable. i like being smart. but i hated being categorized by that.

nowadays, the more people i meet, the more i recognize the fall in their face, the disbelief, the twinge of guilt or almost panic when i say, “i (too) went to brighton.” the bottom here was my friend, and i do mean friend, who said, “well, you must’ve become a lot more hip since then, haven’t you?”
to which i firmly replied, “no.”

in response to a different question, i don’t think i am any more myself now than i was in high school. i’m just more evident (as myself) to other people now.
how this happened i don’t rightly know.
it took a long time, a lot of self-doubt and subsequent shoring up of self-esteem. some of it was at the cost of social acceptability, i gave up on caring and was thus liberated to do whatever i wanted. and discovered i enjoyed my own company immensely.

taken under the wing of a disenchanted socialite, i learned how to navigate the shallower waters of sociability and make my “idiosyncrasies” more accessible to my peers.

now i have become a harmless eccentric, still widely unknown, but smiled upon indulgently when forced on people’s notice.
people recognize my purse or my shoes, and then associate them with me months later. this i don’t mind. it’s much better than being known merely as smart and quiet.

as i started becoming aware of different personalities around me, i found myself repeatedly attracted to the people you either love or hate. i would think of damon albarn telling me that "anonymity can cost; it's never cheap or cheerful." and think he was right. think he was singing my own feelings on the matter. i used to think of 10000 maniacs singing “your silence is my greatest fear” and think that it would be better to be hated because at least they knew who you were.
but i no longer wish for that.
i can’t take the hatred.



and, come to think of it, i don't think i could handle the attention very well either. i like the anonymity after all.

nature is a language, can't you read?

today i walked around the mbh instead of through it.
this is the one luxury i have allowed myself in the recently more humane temperatures we have enjoyed.
i'm conscientiously not getting too comfortable.
after all, you know what they say: "don't plant tomatoes until there is no snow on the oquirrhs."

as i walked along, i heard the pine cones opening in the trees.
i didn't like it.
i felt like they were talking about something i didn't understand.

staff only beyond this point

so today my boss took me and seyran on a field trip.
you know how we're doing some major renovations here?
well, they've finished a little bit so they took reshelve out of what they call "the 1968" and moved them upstairs into the new bit. i don't get to move cause my office is already in a little temporary structure within "the 1995".
however, i DO have to drop off carts of books to reshelve/marking every day so today i got to go inside the new library!
now, i'll be honest, it wasn't a revelatory experience, but there are lots of windows and it looks like there will be a door on the south side of the 3rd floor. that'll be nice.
the really best thing is that i got to go where you can't go because I WORK AT THE LIBRARY!!!

the fact of the matter is: it's tuesday and i'm tired.