Saturday, September 17, 2005
And
it's suddenly winter and I feel like an invalid. Bah.
Computer is sick unto death, but thankfully it only appears to be that the fan isn't working, and hasn't been for some time, so it's been valiantly struggling on. Only the occasional vaguely frightening POOOMPF of auto-cutout and black screen.
I wrote a very long post the other day and it's the only one I've ever kept filed away as a draft. It did have some interesting stuff about the time I got trapped on a fairground ride for an hour which I may still salvage. After that it just drove off the path into some kind of nonsensebog where it remains mired, for shame. But really, given how infuriated and bored I am with myself, it can't make for anything but boringly infuriating reading. So consider yourselves spared. For now. Buahahahahah.
I'm probably not helping myself by reading 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' - wonderful because it's beautifully written (and unlike many books which intimidate me out of my tenuous sense of myself as a writer, the prose is of a sort which I dare to imagine I could one day produce), and horrifying because it seems so awfully likely. The thought that every psychotic killer was given birth to by someone doesn't put me off children - I don't think I've ever had a maternal instinct flit across my psyche's big me-screen even for a second - but the fact that you might just give birth to a person you don't like and who doesn't like you certainly reinforces my plan, or lack thereof. Since I am strongly inclined to think I'll never have a child, you'd think I'd be 'safe' to read a book like this; but it is getting to me on some level.
Aside from anything else, I think children are too easy to fuck up, through no fault of your own. They're even easier to fuck up if you're careless or selfish and know damn well that you are, yet can't face up to that and try to cover yourself, wearing parental clothes and saying parental things and making parental gestures, for the sake of appearance and so that you can sleep at night. Anyway - the main character in 'Kevin', the mother, is the sort of successfully self-contained individual who has nothing to gain from motherhood, and should never have been talked into it. This is probably what bothers me - the completeness and relentlessness with which she sees everything that makes her real to herself, everything she is happy with and proud of about her self-made self, just being sucked viciously down the drain. The kid won't breastfeed but he latches on nonetheless and drains her of everything else. Clinging as I do to my sense of self as if it's the only rubber ring in the Atlantic, the description of this loss fills me with a visceral aaargh.
I might make a decent adoptive parent, all full of righteousness and self-sacrifice and trying to fix or at least hold together something discarded by someone else - the stakes are just too high with someone who's come out of your own body. But I think I'll probably opt out altogether. I might be a lot better at it than some, but that wouldn't be good enough for me. It just about works with the dog, and he's at least mostly unaware of my worries that he's not happy. I'm not sure I'd want to inflict myself on anyone so porous as a small child who's unable to walk away. I can't predict how I'd react with enough surety to make it worth the risk, for them. God knows I feel bad enough if I shout at the dog, as I did this morning when he was frightening the crap out of the post-person. "It's alright, he's just making a lot of noise, he doesn't bite," I assured her. "That's what they all say," she replied with all the high-horsey senselessness of a - well, the same streak I've found running through a lot of people here.
Thinking about it later, I thought - firstly, why wouldn't she take my word for it? What possible reason could I have to tell her that my dog doesn't bite if he does, and might bite her, meaning that she would be hurt and I would be in serious trouble? Do people here lie automatically, saying that something isn't their fault even when they're on the brink of inevitable and inexorable exposure? Doesn't the still-just-about posh voice and um, dishevelled appearance count for anything? Secondly - oh, I was pathetically offended on another level than this basic mistrust of my word (I hate to be taken for dishonest about anything, ever). I am hellbent, generally, on finding things to say that no one has ever said before in quite the same way. I do not say things that "they all" say. I do not! I'm a true original! I do not submit to generic judgement, you fucks! How dare she!
I'm so looking forward to returning to London, where people still think much of themselves and look to gain points and do all the fantastically irksome things Lancastrians do, but, y'know, differently.
Ah me.
But now I'm cheered having just discerned a 'Golden Child' reference in a Kanye West song. Heheh.
Computer is sick unto death, but thankfully it only appears to be that the fan isn't working, and hasn't been for some time, so it's been valiantly struggling on. Only the occasional vaguely frightening POOOMPF of auto-cutout and black screen.
I wrote a very long post the other day and it's the only one I've ever kept filed away as a draft. It did have some interesting stuff about the time I got trapped on a fairground ride for an hour which I may still salvage. After that it just drove off the path into some kind of nonsensebog where it remains mired, for shame. But really, given how infuriated and bored I am with myself, it can't make for anything but boringly infuriating reading. So consider yourselves spared. For now. Buahahahahah.
I'm probably not helping myself by reading 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' - wonderful because it's beautifully written (and unlike many books which intimidate me out of my tenuous sense of myself as a writer, the prose is of a sort which I dare to imagine I could one day produce), and horrifying because it seems so awfully likely. The thought that every psychotic killer was given birth to by someone doesn't put me off children - I don't think I've ever had a maternal instinct flit across my psyche's big me-screen even for a second - but the fact that you might just give birth to a person you don't like and who doesn't like you certainly reinforces my plan, or lack thereof. Since I am strongly inclined to think I'll never have a child, you'd think I'd be 'safe' to read a book like this; but it is getting to me on some level.
Aside from anything else, I think children are too easy to fuck up, through no fault of your own. They're even easier to fuck up if you're careless or selfish and know damn well that you are, yet can't face up to that and try to cover yourself, wearing parental clothes and saying parental things and making parental gestures, for the sake of appearance and so that you can sleep at night. Anyway - the main character in 'Kevin', the mother, is the sort of successfully self-contained individual who has nothing to gain from motherhood, and should never have been talked into it. This is probably what bothers me - the completeness and relentlessness with which she sees everything that makes her real to herself, everything she is happy with and proud of about her self-made self, just being sucked viciously down the drain. The kid won't breastfeed but he latches on nonetheless and drains her of everything else. Clinging as I do to my sense of self as if it's the only rubber ring in the Atlantic, the description of this loss fills me with a visceral aaargh.
I might make a decent adoptive parent, all full of righteousness and self-sacrifice and trying to fix or at least hold together something discarded by someone else - the stakes are just too high with someone who's come out of your own body. But I think I'll probably opt out altogether. I might be a lot better at it than some, but that wouldn't be good enough for me. It just about works with the dog, and he's at least mostly unaware of my worries that he's not happy. I'm not sure I'd want to inflict myself on anyone so porous as a small child who's unable to walk away. I can't predict how I'd react with enough surety to make it worth the risk, for them. God knows I feel bad enough if I shout at the dog, as I did this morning when he was frightening the crap out of the post-person. "It's alright, he's just making a lot of noise, he doesn't bite," I assured her. "That's what they all say," she replied with all the high-horsey senselessness of a - well, the same streak I've found running through a lot of people here.
Thinking about it later, I thought - firstly, why wouldn't she take my word for it? What possible reason could I have to tell her that my dog doesn't bite if he does, and might bite her, meaning that she would be hurt and I would be in serious trouble? Do people here lie automatically, saying that something isn't their fault even when they're on the brink of inevitable and inexorable exposure? Doesn't the still-just-about posh voice and um, dishevelled appearance count for anything? Secondly - oh, I was pathetically offended on another level than this basic mistrust of my word (I hate to be taken for dishonest about anything, ever). I am hellbent, generally, on finding things to say that no one has ever said before in quite the same way. I do not say things that "they all" say. I do not! I'm a true original! I do not submit to generic judgement, you fucks! How dare she!
I'm so looking forward to returning to London, where people still think much of themselves and look to gain points and do all the fantastically irksome things Lancastrians do, but, y'know, differently.
Ah me.
But now I'm cheered having just discerned a 'Golden Child' reference in a Kanye West song. Heheh.
