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the sweet silver smell of the dark
I think I've had more actual social contact today than I normally do in an entire week.
At my eight o'clock class the professor actually made us go up to the board and work problems. Not only that, she made *all* of us go up, one-by-one, in order. I think she was tired of staring out at eight o'clock zombies and was going to *force* us to interact, come hell or high water. (She's one of my favorite people in the department, 'cause she *notices* and she cares. Of course that also makes me try to avoid her at all costs, 'cause she *notices*, and she cares.)
Then in Archeology one of the girls I'm doing the final group project with sat next to me and tried to engage me in conversation all period. And she's really nice, so I had to talk back, but! Conversation! Auughh! Then I snuck out to the engineering food court in hopes of lunch and a nice introspective hour with my laptop and this boy sat down across from me and tried to talk to me too! Why? I surely wasn't dressed any more approachably than usual. (Although I was showing my knees for the first time this year. Maybe he was driven mad by lust after seeing three inches of a woman's bare leg?)
And then the three-hour lab. Which often serves as my necessary weekly ration of social interaction anyway. But this week was the practice lab practical, so we all had serious discussions with the professor about how we were doing in class, and then usually I'd duck out early for more hiding time, only my laptop didn't charge right, and I was one of the last people whose work she checked, so I ended up sitting there for the full three hours, discussing things. With people. Fun people I like talking with, but still, actual face-to-face people. My four o'clock class after that, luckily, I managed to be no more social than usual, and then I took another hour for a solitary dinner and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
icarusancalion's Stargate fic.
After that was the annual Writer's House Litfest and literary magazine unveiling, and since I hadn't made it to any of their other events since I graduated I thought perhaps I ought to go, so I did, and I wandered around for a while attempting vaguely to talk to people I'd seen maybe twice in the past year after spending two years in a writing workshop with them (and workshopping somebody's writing is about the most intense interpersonal interaction one can have, short of sex. Only I haven't actually had sex, so really I'm just extrapolating based on what I've read in stories, and it's entirely possible that a good hard beta'ing is more intense than sex, but the process does has a lot in common. Anyway. Nearly my entire poetry class from last year was there, so they must have all felt called back by something too.) And then I fidgeted through the presentations, grabbed a copy of this year's Stylus, said Hi to Laura (Who is vastly pregnant. Last time I was there, Johnna was vastly pregnant and Laura was tiny and skinny. Now they've switched places.) And then I fled.
In high school, where I'd often spend fifteen-hour days in a building with all the charm and privacy of a POW camp, I learned the skill of finding solitude in the middle of crowds and regulations. (That simile comes to mind particularly because I spent a month of lunch periods sophomore year re-reading a very old copy of The Great Escape in a dusty corner of the school library. And I was in the library using a not-entirely-legitimate pass, which only made the comparison seem more apt. Of course at Stalag Luft they at least got to see sunlight if they wanted to.) Now that I can have all the dark and quiet I want, I've lost the trick of stealing it. I can't stay social for more than a few hours without beginning to feel bits of me unravel and fray away at the edges, and I have to take a time-out for a while and be solitary and knit my mind back together. This is probably not a good long-term solution. But.
So I ran out of the Writers' House. Ran literally: Running all-out, like socializing, is something I don't do nearly enough. Unlike socializing, I don't miss it if I stop. Unlike socializing, it fills me with joy when I do it. I run full-pelt with my arms out like a kid playing airplane, my skirt flopping up around my thighs and my feet plopping down flat one after the other as I fall, and fall, and fall, on and on forward and up.
I ran out to the end of one of the concrete piers in front of the library and sat down and got my breath back (because even that little bit of running stole my breath quite away) and read the poem "Loud Cows" out of the Ursula le Guin book I've been reading. I read it loudly, and unashamedly, to the night. Which is in a way a rather silly way to read it, because it's a poem about how all wordcraft should be about sharing and conversing and community. But I read it in protest against listening to an hour of award-winning creative writing which I couldn't tell from hearing whether it was poetry or prose. If a poem doesn't sound like a poem, read naturally, then it's not a poem, it's something that hasn't been made to be anything. And that's part of what le Guin was saying with Loud Cows.
And maybe it was appropriate to say it to the night and the passers-by, after, and after all, because maybe it's also about the difference between talking and between saying, between conversing and making noise, about the fundamental human right to occasionally MOOO among strangers:
ETA: Also, I had a sudden urge to go read War and Peace.
At my eight o'clock class the professor actually made us go up to the board and work problems. Not only that, she made *all* of us go up, one-by-one, in order. I think she was tired of staring out at eight o'clock zombies and was going to *force* us to interact, come hell or high water. (She's one of my favorite people in the department, 'cause she *notices* and she cares. Of course that also makes me try to avoid her at all costs, 'cause she *notices*, and she cares.)
Then in Archeology one of the girls I'm doing the final group project with sat next to me and tried to engage me in conversation all period. And she's really nice, so I had to talk back, but! Conversation! Auughh! Then I snuck out to the engineering food court in hopes of lunch and a nice introspective hour with my laptop and this boy sat down across from me and tried to talk to me too! Why? I surely wasn't dressed any more approachably than usual. (Although I was showing my knees for the first time this year. Maybe he was driven mad by lust after seeing three inches of a woman's bare leg?)
And then the three-hour lab. Which often serves as my necessary weekly ration of social interaction anyway. But this week was the practice lab practical, so we all had serious discussions with the professor about how we were doing in class, and then usually I'd duck out early for more hiding time, only my laptop didn't charge right, and I was one of the last people whose work she checked, so I ended up sitting there for the full three hours, discussing things. With people. Fun people I like talking with, but still, actual face-to-face people. My four o'clock class after that, luckily, I managed to be no more social than usual, and then I took another hour for a solitary dinner and
icarusancalion's Stargate fic.After that was the annual Writer's House Litfest and literary magazine unveiling, and since I hadn't made it to any of their other events since I graduated I thought perhaps I ought to go, so I did, and I wandered around for a while attempting vaguely to talk to people I'd seen maybe twice in the past year after spending two years in a writing workshop with them (and workshopping somebody's writing is about the most intense interpersonal interaction one can have, short of sex. Only I haven't actually had sex, so really I'm just extrapolating based on what I've read in stories, and it's entirely possible that a good hard beta'ing is more intense than sex, but the process does has a lot in common. Anyway. Nearly my entire poetry class from last year was there, so they must have all felt called back by something too.) And then I fidgeted through the presentations, grabbed a copy of this year's Stylus, said Hi to Laura (Who is vastly pregnant. Last time I was there, Johnna was vastly pregnant and Laura was tiny and skinny. Now they've switched places.) And then I fled.
In high school, where I'd often spend fifteen-hour days in a building with all the charm and privacy of a POW camp, I learned the skill of finding solitude in the middle of crowds and regulations. (That simile comes to mind particularly because I spent a month of lunch periods sophomore year re-reading a very old copy of The Great Escape in a dusty corner of the school library. And I was in the library using a not-entirely-legitimate pass, which only made the comparison seem more apt. Of course at Stalag Luft they at least got to see sunlight if they wanted to.) Now that I can have all the dark and quiet I want, I've lost the trick of stealing it. I can't stay social for more than a few hours without beginning to feel bits of me unravel and fray away at the edges, and I have to take a time-out for a while and be solitary and knit my mind back together. This is probably not a good long-term solution. But.
So I ran out of the Writers' House. Ran literally: Running all-out, like socializing, is something I don't do nearly enough. Unlike socializing, I don't miss it if I stop. Unlike socializing, it fills me with joy when I do it. I run full-pelt with my arms out like a kid playing airplane, my skirt flopping up around my thighs and my feet plopping down flat one after the other as I fall, and fall, and fall, on and on forward and up.
I ran out to the end of one of the concrete piers in front of the library and sat down and got my breath back (because even that little bit of running stole my breath quite away) and read the poem "Loud Cows" out of the Ursula le Guin book I've been reading. I read it loudly, and unashamedly, to the night. Which is in a way a rather silly way to read it, because it's a poem about how all wordcraft should be about sharing and conversing and community. But I read it in protest against listening to an hour of award-winning creative writing which I couldn't tell from hearing whether it was poetry or prose. If a poem doesn't sound like a poem, read naturally, then it's not a poem, it's something that hasn't been made to be anything. And that's part of what le Guin was saying with Loud Cows.
And maybe it was appropriate to say it to the night and the passers-by, after, and after all, because maybe it's also about the difference between talking and between saying, between conversing and making noise, about the fundamental human right to occasionally MOOO among strangers:
"All, all walls fall.
I say aloud: All walls all fall.
It is aloud, it is aloud to be loud,
and I say it aloud LOUDly
loudness allowing us to BE us --- SO --
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE OH-ver---ETA: Also, I had a sudden urge to go read War and Peace.
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And I would have felt bad being bitter at them anyway, because Siobhan must have nagged me about five times to submit poetry, and I chicken out and didn't.
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Eh, don't worry about, bitterness I say.
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Oh well, I probably would have just stood there and mumbled and mentally written out my lj entry if I'd stayed, because, seriously, my capacity for interaction is extremely limited, and getting worse every day.
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And heh, either way, doesn't really matter. I understand.
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How does Stylus look this year? Did you by any chance pick up an extra copy? I finally took myself off their mailing list, so I have no idea what they're up to anymore..
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I haven't actually opened it yet, but judging by the cover (q-:) it's quite well done. I didn't pick up an extra-- when I left last night, they were only allowing one copy each. I'll see if there're any around today.
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What translation did you read?