butterflydreaming (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
butterflydreaming) wrote2006-06-06 07:06 pm
butterflydreaming) wrote2006-06-06 07:06 pm
I Wear Purple Now
I've faced it: I'm a bit of a kook. Y'all are weird enough yourselves to know that the freaks are our people, and when we're among our own kind we have a tendency to play up our, ah, individuality. Yet among the straights we have to play a role of relative normalcy. Think of those moments when you catch yourself from making a Sith reference. Well, I guess some of you are in workplaces where you wouldn't need to catch yourself.
I'm not a standard issue geek, either. You know it -- I'm on the edge of not-includedness on occasion. It's okay; I'm never going to catch up. Nor to I necessarily want to, except academically. I'll skip watching B5 and LARPing and a few other things in favor of... I don't know... cello music and textile arts. And paper.
When I'm old, there is a high likelyhood that I'll be the neighborhood witch-lady and little kids will be afraid of my house. I'll have too many cats. I'll dress up on Halloween, Carnival, and other random days of the year, and go to the grocery store like that. I'll pontificate, given a victim, on any number of subjects. I'll continue to say "thank you" to servers when they refill the waterglass.
In the meantime, there is no point in pretending too hard that I'm mainstream. I make a moderate effort but don't break a sweat at it. Because the mundanes can always sense the oddball, and they stand around the office cooler with the nervousness of zebras when there's a croc in the waterhole. More than that, I'm always going to be a little off. Sanity really is on a sliding scale. I started thinking that it would be easier if I was old, if youth didn't mandate that I had to keep myself presentable and, well, attractive. What a relief it would be to be out of the range of the beauty ideal. Because a woman in her 30's is expected to make herself attractive to MOTAS, no matter her relationship status or preference.
Started thinking. When I kept thinking, I was reminded of the well known poem about wearing purple and spitting and such. I know I'm a nutter now; I have no intention of waiting until the "freedom" of some number of years, not a set number. And really, it's been too late for a while now.
It doesn't always make me happy. Feeling like a weirdo makes me want to hide. Bland has the advantage of blending with the background. No one likes to be ridiculed, even by idiots.
There really isn't any way to win across the board, is there?
I'm not a standard issue geek, either. You know it -- I'm on the edge of not-includedness on occasion. It's okay; I'm never going to catch up. Nor to I necessarily want to, except academically. I'll skip watching B5 and LARPing and a few other things in favor of... I don't know... cello music and textile arts. And paper.
When I'm old, there is a high likelyhood that I'll be the neighborhood witch-lady and little kids will be afraid of my house. I'll have too many cats. I'll dress up on Halloween, Carnival, and other random days of the year, and go to the grocery store like that. I'll pontificate, given a victim, on any number of subjects. I'll continue to say "thank you" to servers when they refill the waterglass.
In the meantime, there is no point in pretending too hard that I'm mainstream. I make a moderate effort but don't break a sweat at it. Because the mundanes can always sense the oddball, and they stand around the office cooler with the nervousness of zebras when there's a croc in the waterhole. More than that, I'm always going to be a little off. Sanity really is on a sliding scale. I started thinking that it would be easier if I was old, if youth didn't mandate that I had to keep myself presentable and, well, attractive. What a relief it would be to be out of the range of the beauty ideal. Because a woman in her 30's is expected to make herself attractive to MOTAS, no matter her relationship status or preference.
Started thinking. When I kept thinking, I was reminded of the well known poem about wearing purple and spitting and such. I know I'm a nutter now; I have no intention of waiting until the "freedom" of some number of years, not a set number. And really, it's been too late for a while now.
It doesn't always make me happy. Feeling like a weirdo makes me want to hide. Bland has the advantage of blending with the background. No one likes to be ridiculed, even by idiots.
There really isn't any way to win across the board, is there?
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[the
Yet among the straights we have to play a role of relative normalcy.
i'm sure that if i told my students that i'm acting as normal as possible when i'm in front of them, that they'd all get rilly scared, and back away slowly, while maintaining eye contact.
I'm not a standard issue geek, either
i'm not sure that most geeks are... part of the point, innit?
When I'm old [snip] refill the watercress
me too with all of this paragraph, at least in spirit - the execution may vary somewhat.
Sanity really is on a sliding scale.
wasn't it
charles mansonjohn lennon who saidyou go back to the top
of the slide
then you turn and you stop
and you go for a ride
then you get to the bottom
then i see you again
And really, it's been too late for a while now
word, sister, word!
There really isn't any way to win across the board, is there?
wasn't it W.C.Fields who said "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. then quit. there's no sense being a damned fool about it."?
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I always come back to one point, though, when I'm forced to admit how odd I see the world compared to everyone else I know: At least at 30, I can say the same things that I did at 16, but now people laugh. That's gotta be some kind of sign :-)
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I want to be ljust as self-confident as one of my German teachers, who always wore a home-dyed purple jacket, wrote in purple ink and signed with a flower (a man! gasp!).
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