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February 22, 2006
Sore Thumbs
I'm annoyed. Severely annoyed. This is my second attempt at posting today. The first attempt was going so well. It was good, and I'm sure you would have enjoyed it. However, someone left the door to my CPU open. The same someone who, when he built my computer last year, opted for the CPU tower with a snazzy door to prevent little fingers from, say, hitting the power button after I've dashed away from my computer without saving my draft. I think you can figure out what happened this morning without me going any further.
It's a sickening feeling, watching helplessly as the computer uses my hard work as a bedtime snack before going sleepy-bye. It's been over three hours and I'm still catching myself thinking, "But if I could just hit the magic button, my writing would reappear!" While I'm at it, I might as well see if the Mystical Lost Writing Recovery Gnomes are back from the mines with my work.
I'm thinking too much like a writer on this and seeing the metaphoricals. With just a push of a button with a tiny finger, my words can vanish, never to be finished and read. Dude. That's some heavy shit. It's relatively new, too. I'll bet writers 100 years ago didn't live with the gut-wrenching fear that all their hard work could be obliterated in a nanosecond. Sure, their work could be destroyed, but even if it, say, caught fire, at least there might be time to stomp out the flames and salvage something.
Two lessons learned today: 1) someone is never going to learn to close doors, and 2) the "save draft" function in Moveable Type is there for a reason.
Another lesson to be learned by someone: if you're too damn rushed to close the damn door on the computer - especially if you're so damn rushed that you leave the damn CD-ROM open for the cat to use as a springboard - then you're officially too damn rushed to be burning CDs at 5 a.m.
Anyway, what was I saying?
Right. This morning, before Clara Jane woke up (doing much better than yesterday, thanks), I opened Firefox with intensions of blogging about something. I don't even remember what, now. When I open Firefox, I have one of those snazzy customized Google homepages as my start-up. I live and die by the Google homepage. It's got feeds from my Gmail, my friends on Flickr,the local weather, enough news to make my head pop off my shoulders eight times a day, an IP address look-up tool (because I'm keeping my eye on you people, oh yes I am), my daily horoscope, and feeds from NPR Recommended Books, Simply Recipes, and wikiHow. I even get a quote of the day. Today's is: "There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality." - Pablo Picasso. Sort of fitting, since all traces of the reality of this mornings writing have been removed.
Point is, I'm a slave to my customized Google homepage. Let the world fall down around me! I'll still have a bazillion gigs of constantly-updated information whizzing past my head, oh yeah!
I do enjoy the links I get from wikiHow. Everyday, they toss three random how-to guides into the feed. From these, I have learned how to start my own 501c3 nonprofit organization, grow organic spring vegetables, and dress to conceal a large stomach. The trick, apparently, is to wrap ones head and neck in yards and yards and yards of flouncy orange tulle to draw attention upwards. But one of today's wikiHows gave me pause for concern: How to Tame a Free Spirit.
Now, as someone who often gets lumped into the "free spirit" category, I can't say that I want the general public to have access to this information:
Have you met someone who's fiercely independent, and yearn for their devotion? The key to taming a wild soul is to make him or her feel like they can be freer with you than with anybody else. Here's how to have that free spirit eating out of your hand, willingly and happily.
Surprisingly, the instructions that follow don't include the finer points of clubbing your girl over the head to make it easier to drag her back to the cave by the hank of her hair. Really, the instructions could be renamed "How to Function in a Relationship When You're too Insecure to Properly Deal with the Other Humans". Helpful tips like: don't expect your free-spirited partner to do backflips to meet your needs; don't be a suffocating dickhead; roll with the punches; don't impose rules; actually get to know the person; don't be such a tightass; give the benefit of the doubt; free free set them free, etc etc etc. The whole thing reads like it was written by a 16-year-old boy, which it probably was.
So I'm wondering, why are people threatened by free spirits? Is it because if one's spirit is free, one might have the balls to bail out of a lackluster relationship? Perhaps it has more to do with this fear so many people seem to have of honesty. Us free spirited-types, we have a tendancy to blurt out the damnedest things that might hit a little too close to the bone.
I've been watching a situation unfold over the past few days involving one of my favorite blogs. Word got around her small town about her blog, and she found herself with townfolk on her front porch, printed copies of her blog in hand, looking for explainations. Not that she really had anything to explain. Most of her posts pertained to things going on in her own life, which occasionally poked at her sleepy little town. We have that right, right?
I don't live in St. Louis proper. Because of some weird annexing laws, St. Louis is one of those metro areas that's compromised of many small municipalities with their own governments. My own municipality has a population just over 4000, and even though we're a part of the metro area the small-town mentality rules. I bitched about it last year when I got drug to court for my pretend barking dogs and got a big dose of croneyism.
When I wrote those linked posts, I told the truth as I saw it, knowing good and well that the truth is subjective. I know that if you asked my drunken idiot neighbor, or her friend the prosecutor, or her other friend the councilman, they'd have a version that would include the phrase, "That weird girl with the liberal bumper stickers who's only lived here seven years." It's perspective, nothing more, and I can take it. I have my doubts that they could do the same, though.
This friend of mine, with the people distributing burned CD copies of her blog archives around town, made much less scathing remarks about her town last year, around the same time I was throwing my small-town hissy fit. Now, because she had the audacity to state her point of view, she's had to deal with a shitstorm. I'm wondering - hell, I know - the same thing could happen to me. Not that this will cause me to act any differently. People who get so worked up because someone expressed her truth as she sees it rarely do much damage. I'm sure this blogger will be just fine, once these fools get distracted and move on to their next fixation.
But damn. Some days, it just doesn't pay to be a free spirit, especially if you happen to be an eloquent, well-written free spirit with tongue-in-cheek tendancies.
What was that word I thought I made up a few days ago? Homogenity? Turns out, it's a real word, but spelled homogeneity. It has the same meaning as I intended: the quality or state of being homogeneous. I hate it. I really do. I like sticking out like a sore thumb, and I have a deep, abiding affection for other sore thumbs, and a paranoia towards anyone who deems necessary to poke that thumb, especially under the guise of love and attraction.
I don't have to tell you that we live in a society that gives lip service to being an individual, being unique, but communicates something entirely different in its actions: Oh, we love you and we think your free spirit is just the cutest little thing. But we'd love you more if you were a little less, you know, you. Because you, at your full volume, scare the hell out of us. You think differently, act differently, speak differently and in doing so, your uniqueness might bring our own lackings to light. Now come on ... just settle down. I've got a nice palmful of grain. Don't you want a little bit?
Anyone who wants a free spirit to eat from the palm of his hand probably harbors a fistful of poison.
Posted by Robin at February 22, 2006 01:19 PM
Comments
As one who is less a free spirit than a wall chameleon, I admire that.
Posted by: moose at February 22, 2006 07:00 PM
I'm going to tattoo that last sentence on my forehead, so wise it is.
'Cept I'm a bit of a sissy.
So, I'll just emroider it on a pillow.
'Cept I don't embroider.
So, I'll write it down.
That I can do.
Thanks, Poppymom.
Posted by: Summer at February 22, 2006 08:58 PM
Sometimes I like being a chameleon and sometimes I LOVE sticking out. I hate being expected to be homogeneous.
Posted by: jess at February 22, 2006 11:21 PM
Huh. I've not only been in that kind of hot seat as your friend (though not of the same magnitude, and nothing much ever came of it, THANK GOD because it scared the shit out of me), but I have know others who have had similar things happen to them. I have seen it happen several times, in fact, people going apeshit over blogs.
Posted by: CatPants at February 23, 2006 12:16 PM
Well, many, many people are ignorant and love to jump on a band wagon. People's values astound me -- I just don't get them. I so HATE the herd mentality. Thank frickin' God there are people like Poppy and others who dare to just be who they are. The word normal, to me, is not a compliment -- it is absolutely something to be avoided. I don't want to be like everyone else -- because frankly, most of those people scare me. I went to a party once with my ex, and there were all these "super smart" people who had MBA's and such from "Stanford" and "Harvard" -- and you know what? They bored the fuck out of me. I'm not saying those are bad schools, not even close. And I'm not saying education is overrated -- I, too, have an MBA, but definitely not an Ivy league diploma! I will say that they were all horrified that I actually worked during the day, went to school at night, and financed my own education. No less than four of those women said to me "I so couldn't have done that." Because they got a free ride from the parents, and they never even got to have a glimpse of the things they are capable of. I just looked at them and said, "You know, you never actually know what you're capable of until you're faced with a difficult challenge. I have about 6 months of school left, and I'm doing just fine." Some people are so surface level I don't understand how they even value existence. They have absolutely no substance. And this pnenomenon crosses all intellect levels and class levels. The "privileged people" just seem more palitable and so that much easier to follow for those with less intellectual capacity. I was horrifed and just wanted to get away from all of them, but unfortunately, we were spending the night. I realized that weekend that most people just don't really think about things -- they just do whatever everyone else is doing -- the "normal, status quo" thing -- and it doesn't matter if you grew up poor or privileged. And if they feel differently, they pretend they don't because they don't want to be ostracized by "The Crowd." When did actually THINKING about things and discussing things of intrinsic value with others become passe??? Also, what happened to parents actually instilling relevant, admirable values in their children? Thank you, Poppy -- you always make me think hard, and I so appreciate that.
Posted by: Jessica at February 24, 2006 12:55 AM
"-we live in a society that gives lip service to being an individual, being unique, but communicates something entirely different in its actions. . ."
My husband and I were talking about something similar a couple of nights ago. It feels like there is a lot of pressure for us to conform, now that we're parents. Which is weird because the town in which we live is supposed to have a reputation of tolerance.
That is kind of disturbing-that how-to-tame-a-free-spirit, thing. . .
If you love someone, shouldn't you just let them be who they are? Why would you want to "tame" them-they wouldn't be the same person.
That makes me mad.
It makes me want to write a little article for wikipedia about how to spot when a control freak is trying to tame you.
Posted by: Johanna Cagan at February 24, 2006 08:49 AM
