Darkoshi

Some days it takes SO LONG to write down notes about my day in my daily notes file, because there's so much to write. That is even without waxing poetic about anything; with hardly editing it at all, just typing what I remember in the hopes that it will make sense to me later if I ever read it again. Later on I still sometimes find that I forgot to include some important things.

Oh Gosh. I just remembered another important thing about yesterday to write down. It's something I plan to post about eventually, but not now.

It's curious reading some of my old writings. Like from two decades ago. I used wordplay and oblique references to things. Now, for some of those posts, I can't remember what I had been referencing, or what events sparked the words and feelings. So for me to read it now, is probably what it was like back then, for others to read it, if they were to have ever done so.

For example:

* august 5, 2000 *

visiting an old haunt
i was disturbed by what i found
a poltergeist haunting my abandoned abode

breaking the clear silence
with words of hate
(or were they words of pain?)
or were they just words

playing tricks in the halls and
dripping blood on the clean marble floors

but i doubt this poltergeist was expecting visitors,
so should i take offense from its lack of hospitality?


...

I feel like if I think about it hard enough, I might remember what that was about. Or I might not. If I don't, it's a part of my history / memory / inner life that may forevermore be lost to me. A part of my history become a mystery.

...

update: I remembered what that entry was about. I used to frequent a Culture Club message board with a group of other online fans. Over time many of my acquaintances there drifted away, and more flak got posted; including a fair bit of trolling & unpleasantness. I drifted away too, but checked back once in a while. The website owner eventually set up a new message board with tighter controls, but the old board page was still there and still usable.

I had checked the old page, and found that a solitary troll had posted even more unpleasant and vicious messages in the meanwhile, even though no one else was using that board anymore.

Zorro probably wonders why loud music always starts playing right after ze gets comfy and starts grooming zirself.

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Zorro probably wonders why loud music always starts playing right after they get comfy and start grooming themself.

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marahmarie questioned what pronoun to use for a burping squirrel, and it got me thinking.

There's not much point in using gendered pronouns for animals, as usually there's no need to distinguish them based on their sex. For example, "That bird is squawking so loud, it's giving me a headache." When there is a need to point out an animal's sex, one can simply say so: "That's a male bird"; "That's a female bird".

The pronoun "it" is gender-neutral but also impersonal/depersonalizing. We don't usually call a companion animal "it", but rather "he" or "she", because "it" sounds too impersonal. Generally, we know the sex of our companion animals, so we know which gendered pronoun to use.

Even so, calling animals "he" or "she" based on their sex seems silly to me sometimes. Those pronouns evoke mental gender-related connotations and stereotypes which are even more ridiculous when applied to animals than when applied to people*.

It's not usually obvious however, what sex an unfamiliar animal is. So one can either call it "it", or one can guess and call it "he" or "she".

If some gender-neutral pronoun other than "it" came into common usage for people, we could use it for animals too, both familiar and unfamiliar ones. We would no longer need to distinguish between them based on their sex, nor depersonalize them.

If that happened, I wonder if it would also affect how people think of animals in general. Would people start to feel more kinship/empathy for them? Would people who are unable to feel such empathy tend to call animals "it" while people who felt empathy would use the other pronoun?


* A character in a book I'm reading, in saying good-bye to his horse, said (translated from German) "You're the prettiest, smartest, and most dependable companion one could ever wish for." It was a female horse. If the horse were male, I doubt the character would have called it pretty. Yet, are female horses prettier than male horses? I think not.

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I was also thinking that while "they" is gaining traction as a gender-neutral pronoun, it would be good to have another option. One to use when we don't know or care about a person's gender, and another for people whose gender we know is other than male or female.

The singular pronoun "they" can already be used for both cases. But due to the first usage, it feels somewhat impersonal and distancing. While I don't mind being called "they" (and sometimes would appreciate it), it's not really my preferred pronoun.

But having 2 such pronouns might bring about too many complexities.

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The thoughts that spark a post like this take only a few minutes in my head. Why then, does it take me over 2 hours to put those thoughts into coherent written form? And even then, the sentences feel awkward, and I feel like I'm leaving out half of what I wanted to write?

A few of my videos on Youtube continue to get occasional comments long after I uploaded them. For instance, the ones where I discussed dysthymia. Some of the comments really make me curious as to what I specifically said in those videos. Comments such as:

"Every word you said sounded exactly what I am going through"
"You describe the whole thing perfectly."
"Great testimony. You explained things very well, and I relate completely"
"Hey, this really rang a bell with me. I've been thinking along the same lines, too, and I really think there's some truth in that "fantasyland" you were talking about.",
"You and I could be the same person, everything you described is me to a tee. "

But the only way for me to remember what I said in the videos, is to watch them again. I keep thinking I should transcribe them for my own reference. Maybe I'll finally do that. Maybe I'll see how good the automatic closed captions are, and see if I can copy & edit them.

If I had made it a text post to begin with, instead of a video, I wouldn't have to spend time watching and transcribing it. I could simply bring up the page and see the words. I probably would have been able to compose and articulate my thoughts better, too. But oh well. Videos seem to reach more people and get more comments, than text posts along the same lines. So videos have their benefits too.

If I compose text and then try to read/speak it in a video, rather than ad-libbing, I feel totally awkward and silly. Besides being self-conscious about what I've written, it also seems fairly pointless to make a video, rather than simply posting the text.

Deleting one's old posts which seem insignificant is a bad idea. The seeming significance of various entries varies over time, and perhaps based on one's mood. Better to tag them with some unique value, if you want to be able to filter them out for whatever reason. Or better to make them private. That's easier to reverse, if you later change your mind.

I rarely ever completely delete things I've written - I keep copies on my computer. But in the past, I deleted various entries from LJ, which in looking at them now, I don't understand why I deleted them and wish I hadn't.

Sometimes writing things in LJ makes me feel better, as I've gotten whatever it was I wanted to say out of my system. Other times, it results in me feeling anxiety, worrying about how other people may react to what I've written and how they may view me in a negative light as a result of it.

I have a Clif Builder bar and a Clif Mojo bar, which I found out yesterday are part of a voluntary recall due to the peanut thing. I suppose I should throw them away to be on the safe side, but I haven't brought myself to do it yet.

Note to self: Do not cook brown rice with sugar. In fact, don't buy brown rice again. It never ends up tasting very good to me. Or if so, try the long-grain type for a change, even though with the white rice I prefer the short-grain.

well. i think i've got parts 1 thru 5 of my Tee and the Lore of Vreefalingi story about as good as i can get them. i'm sure they could be a lot better, but I'm not a Creative Writing major, so there.

so if you want to see what kind of (strange, ridiculous?) sex scenes can be penned by a mostly asexual virgin androgyne with bdsm interests... well, you could go straight to parts 4 and 5. of course, then you'd miss the good whipping scene and all.

so now I can finally get working on editing part 6, where Vreefalingi finally comes into play. not to mention Misha, oh so *wonderful* Misha. who has the *good* sex scenes. and then there's Tejel, who does the *bad*good* sex thing. well, i don't know if i'll want to post that.