I wanted to tell them: freedom is a length of rope, God wants you to hang yourself with it.

[momebie]

I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Oh, I had the usual string of dream jobs on hold: astronaut, paleontologist, famous author, etc. I just never actualized them in my mind as solid possibilities. I was mimicking the people around me, as all children do. Until about the age of 17 it didn’t occur to me that I might live through my senior year of high school. It’s not that I was suicidal—that came later—it was merely that the idea of being an independent human being, separate of the structures I’d built for myself, didn’t appeal to me. So I dismissed the thought. Time would stop.

Of course, time didn’t stop. In the last ten years I’ve gone from ignoring the idea of the future to dwelling on it too intently. I can’t sleep some nights. (I didn’t sleep last night, which is why you’re getting this instead of more fiction.) There’s a tag in this journal for ‘the dreaded future’ for a very good reason. The future terrifies me. It terrifies me because everything is going to change and I am going to have to be the one to make some of those changes and I am ultimately responsible for where I end up. That crushing responsibility, above all else, is what I believe in now.

I took a lot of philosophy and religion classes in college. It was the only way to productively work through my fear of free will and how it related (poorly) to my Calvinist theological upbringing. If things are predestined and predetermined, why spend so much time dragging myself through life? I still haven’t found a reliable answer to that one. My solution was to eschew theology altogether, which is a tailspin of a feeling if you were raised with all of the comforting, violent, gilded words of a specific religion.

At that point it was the existentialists that caught me. In them I found the desperate explanation of life that I’d been looking for. It’s all on me. Regardless of whether there are gods in the sky or the earth or the perfume ads they stuff into women’s magazines, I’m still responsible for myself. I have to create a meaning. I have to create myself every day. Every day. Sartre is my boyfriend and Camus is my mistress and even though it means that sometimes I don’t sleep at night, I’m most comfortable when living through the illusion that I’m in control.

And it is an illusion. The world is large and dense and sometimes it feels like it doesn’t matter how much of a path I manage to forge through the brambles, the Universe can come through and just as easily drown me out through no fault of my own. As a child I was taught that it happened to the people Noah didn’t have room for. It can happen to me. So even though I’ve built myself a world of lonely, commanding words, I have to leave room for eventualities. I’m not hedging my bets as much as it sounds like I might be, but in a lot of ways I still am and always will be a little girl, pretending to know what I want to be when I grow up.

There’s a tattoo I’ve been planning for several years now. And those of you who know me will raise your eyebrows and go ‘a tattoo? you want every tattoo’, which is true, but this one is special. This one I’m reserving for a moment when I take one of those large, startling leaps. Right now I go back and forth between deciding whether I want to get it when I move across country or when I graduate grad school. Both are things I’m feeling compelled to do. (Don’t you find that sometimes, as you’re making your way through life, certain decisions feel like they travel in well worn grooves in your soul? They come to you and you wonder in what life you’d ever choose the other option?) I haven’t settled on a design, but I know exactly what it will say.

Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future.

It’s a quote from the Alan Moore comic Watchmen. (Yeah, not only am I an insufferable pretentious douchebag, but I’m also an insufferable pretentious comic book geek. You all probably noticed that by now, though. I just really like Batman, okay?) I wish I could share the panel the line comes from with you, but I don’t have my copy on me and my quick Google search hasn’t turned it up. (Thanks to edincoat it's now at the bottom of the post!) Long story short, one of the characters realizes time as being simultaneous, so he doesn’t feel he’s moving through it linearly so much as bumping up against events as they happen at all points. And I don’t have a giant blue penis, but sometimes, in spite of everything I believe about making me me, that’s how I feel. I’m a blank slate. I’m an ornate statue. I’m a weather worn, pock marked rock. I've blinked out.

I am already who I’ve made myself, and sometimes that futility will just keep you up nights.




This post was written for Topic 25: Uncarved Block at therealljidol. I know there's been a lot of meta lately about fiction vs. non-fiction and how some people feel like they don't really get to know those of us who write fiction. I'd be interested in knowing if you feel like this tells you more about me than my fiction did. As always, I welcome all comments and questions.

Comments

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I really sometimes wonder what I would have thought of predestination if it just hadn't been a tenet of How Things Were. Like, I find most forms of Western Christian Mysticism kind of charming because I learned about them in college. I might have thought the same thing about predestination if it hadn't been such a bug in my ass this whole time.

And I agree, of course. Most religions do boil down to 'Don't Be a Dick', which is why I get so frustrated when that's the one thing people DON'T get out of them!

I also think it's difficult to hide too much in fiction. For me anyway. I'm sure there are people out there who are all 'I can totally write stories about things I wouldn't do set in worlds my beliefs have no authority over!' But, you know, I wouldn't want to work that way. That would take most of the things I enjoy about stories so much out of the process entirely. And please ignore this bucket of faces. Are you using that nose?

[momebie.livejournal.com]

Haha, I'm inclined to agree with you there. Predestined or not, though, I still truly believe that I have to make myself what I want to be, so in essence the idea of predestination to me is more of one of 'oh, this is how KL is and will act as informed by the things she learns along the way and the magic man in the sky knows this because to him it's already happened'. But yeah, I spend entirely too much time pondering metaphysics and such, which I can trace directly back to the existentialism course I took in college. For the most part I'm okay with that as a background hum, but sometimes it leaks through and I fall apart a bit. That's the way in which I'm masochistic.

The people like you who have been around for a long time are part of the reason I've been hesitant to just rehash stories about myself for the competition. You guys already KNOW and it's kind of boring for all of us if we just cover the same ground over and over. That and I just enjoy exploring things more through fiction than I do through banging out my ridiculous thoughts.

I LIKE THAT ICON, IT'S OKAY. I do sometimes beat up metaphors in back alleys.

[winnett.livejournal.com]

I am already who I’ve made myself, and sometimes that futility will just keep you up nights.

*cries* So, there is no hope?

I want to refute this, but I've no creative energy to write anything that sounds snazzy. I think you can constantly reinvent yourself until the day you die. But such an upheaval is too tragic for many people to attempt (like myself).

When I was a kid, I wanted to make a difference. That was what I wanted to 'be' when I grew up. And I knew I was meant for something great, far greater than what I've currently become. So, I have that faith that I can be something more. I just have to find my path to do achieve my greatness.

[theemdash]

Most religions do boil down to 'Don't Be a Dick', which is why I get so frustrated when that's the one thing people DON'T get out of them!

Mmm, yeeeeeeep.

I don't know how the author doesn't influence writing/worlds. This is a HORRIBLE example, but I'm having trouble thinking of a good one since work is all distracting: I mean I think I could write Spring Heeled Jack because I can figure out the motivation to tear a woman apart. But that doesn't mean that I would, just that I can intellectualize that and feel that. THEREFORE, given certain circumstances maybe I could tear a woman apart. WHO KNOWS.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely fatalistic, and if you did get up the energy to refute that particular statement (which I'd totally love to hear!) I'd more than likely agree with you. That statement wasn't meant to say that I've reached the high point of my potential at 28. What I really wanted to get across with the whole thing is that I'm the sum of my parts and if I do take myself into my own hands and make active decisions then I am constantly creating myself over again. I wouldn't have a tattoo set aside for a big leap situation if I didn't think myself possible of taking those leaps. It's the courage I currently lack. But the ability? The ability is endless.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

One of the great things about human beings is that under the right circumstances we're capable of ANYTHING. It's why I'm so preoccupied with identity. It's a fragile thing, if you think about it.

[theemdash]

It really is. I mean, when I think about how much high school fucked me up, how insanely minor events are still screwing with my head, it's a wonder we're not all insane.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. I mean, the reason I react so much more negatively to Karofsky than I think a lot of people do is because I identify too heavily with who he was to Kurt. And Kurt's getting over that, but I'm not, which is clearly all on me. But still. Ugh. And this is all because one person was a bag of dicks eleven years ago.

This is the part of the conversation where I find the Carl Sagan idea that we're made of star stuff immensely comforting. We're older than we can even imagine and probably carry some of that with us, as well as how we'll never really be eliminated entirely, since matter cannot be created or destroyed. We're just bits of things that will become bits of other things. It helps me feel larger rather than smaller.

[basric.livejournal.com]

Written well. Makes me want to go out and get a tattoo. A true and lovely quote. Michelangelo made some statement about how he was just releasing what he saw trapped in the marble.

[quatredeathlady.livejournal.com]

I've been reading all your LJ Idol entries (and loving the WIP you've been posting for them, even if I never comment because I'm just A CREEPY LURKER), and I don't know you very well.

I think that this entry, coupled with the WIP, gives me quite a bit of information about you, and more than either piece would alone. I've never thought much about if fiction or nonfiction tells us more about an author---because I think it depends on the author, as some people have mentioned in other comments. Some authors are more willing to be truthful when they write their nonfiction, and others are not for various personal reason. I do think that generally fiction allows for the revelation of more unintentional truths about the author because they sort of sneak in, and the author is less guarded because they are writing for characters (even if those characters are a part of the author in some way).

However, I think your combination of the WIP and this nonfiction piece show how fiction and nonfiction can each reveal different facets of the same truth, or different truths entirely, about the writer.

And...that's my two cents!

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I believe that Michelangelo is who Moore was harking back to when he wrote that little comment into Doctor Manhattan's thoughts there. The whole scene is rather delicately orchestrated in the comic and I was pretty happy with how it turned out in the movie.

The entire quote in the comic is: Things have their shape in time, not space alone. Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future.

[basric.livejournal.com]

You just need the right sculptor to bring it out.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

WE SHOULD START A CREEPY LURKER'S UNION.

I agree with you. I think that if you CAN get the fiction and non-fiction from a writer then it really helps to piece them together. And I actually hadn't thought about what different truths the two things would tell about me, just that I feel really close to my fiction in general, so that it would probably tell the same nebulous truths as any fact about me would.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

Very true. I try and become that person every day. It's a work in progress.

[theafaye.livejournal.com]

I had a completely secular upbringing, so I'm not plagued with having to overcome that programming. I also happen to think that we don't have Free Will, but that at the same time, the notion is not contradictory with predestination, so there's an element of both in how I view the universe.

And the fiction/non question, well, I think that fiction only reveals more about the author if you happen to know about that author on a personal level to begin with. I wouldn't even dream of drawing any conclusions about what Tim Powers or Guy Gavriel Kay are like as human beings based on what they write other than that they most likely have an interest in mythology and magick. So I might be able to get a sense of interest or themes from fiction but I don't get to know the individual behind those ideas at all, whereas if someone writes something more factual, even if they're lying, how they choose to lie about themselves is very revealing.

Ultimately, we're all presenting an edited image of ourselves to the world whichever way you slice it, so I suppose it comes down to the individual what lens they want to look through.

tl;dr answer - yes, I feel that I got to know YOU better because of this entry.

[tentaclecore]

I have no idea what I used IDOL for at this point. The initial idea was to play with Jen, but then she got booted in week four and I basically was just drifting until I got the boot too. So far, the only thing I've got that's lasting from there are a few awesome friends and an intense wariness of polls.

Ah. So that's what that was. I got as far as the Epic Showdown between Gary another another user then bailed on the entire post. It's sort of amazing how a clusterfuck at the beginning can completely cloud what's really going on for casual observers >_>;;; /feeling philosophical

Link! To the panel! If you decide you need more stuff from Watchmen for whatever reason, let me know. I don't mind uploading shit, for srs.

[tentaclecore]

Weeeeeeird. I always assumed that things like predestination and such would be listed in whatever book they label as their major text. I've read both versions of the bible--yay Catholicism, urgh--and honestly don't recall Saint Peter having a list and checking it twice >_>;;;; But then again, might've missed it. I spent a lot of time while reading the New Testament in particular raging about how unfair it was towards women and minorities. And the twisted bartering system, what the everloving hell made Constantine think that shit was a good idea to put in?!

lol Methodist. Aren't they the ones with their own personal relationship with God? Or was that a different Christian sect? GDI I know more about ancient religions than current ones, what what what.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

That can happen.

THAAAAANK YOOOOOOUS. ♥ Adding to the post.

[mrsquizzical.livejournal.com]

i really feel like a big part of 'getting you' just fell into place.

*hugs*

[momebie.livejournal.com]

And you haven't even met my dad!

*smish*

[momebie.livejournal.com]

There's definitely an element of both in how I now view the universe as well. I honestly don't know whether or not free will is a real thing, but I don't think for one minute that predestination would trump it. Those two concepts can work hand in hand, just like creationism and evolution can. (Which, I'm not a Creationist, but I was raised in the Bible belt, so you know, I've had all kinds of practice smiling and nodding.)

I would argue that you can get hints of how the author sees our world even if you're reading fantasy. You can definitely get more out of it than the mere fact that they're drawn to those types of stories. It DOES help if you know a little about the author, but if there's one thing school taught me it was that you shouldn't shy away from drawing initial conclusions about the way people might see the world, because it could help you relate to them. If your conclusions turn out to be wrong that's also just as well, but engaging an amount of real world context with the text is educational. That is, though, different from drawing conclusions about what they're like as people. What we observe and what we are are very different things.

Of course, how people choose to lie about themselves IS very revealing. It's kind of fascinating, really. And I agree with the sentiment that we present our edited selves. It's almost a necessity. Even the people who know me best can't know me the way I do. Sometimes I edit myself in ways I'm not even fully conscious of. That's very much tied to the question of who I actively make myself.

I feel like I should send everyone who reads this entry a basket of chocolates and some condolences, because I'm really kind of frustrating to know. I think so, anyway. I'm frustrated with me all the time. :p

[i-17bingo.livejournal.com]

The future terrifies me. It terrifies me because everything is going to change and I am going to have to be the one to make some of those changes and I am ultimately responsible for where I end up.

Well, now I know where Or and Mattie get their subliminal nihilistic streaks from...

(And if you read my Bats in the Belfry entry, you know hell of a lot about me too; making people up is easier than just saying it out loud. That's my two cents.)

[momebie.livejournal.com]

That is a really common theme in my characters. Sometimes I write really happy/evil people who don't worry about those things! I swear!

But dude, I did and I do. That's why I've been doing fiction for most of the competition. ♥

[beeker121.livejournal.com]

Alan Moore reference for the win! Though if you had a blue penis I'd be concerned.

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I really feel capable of answering the fiction vs. non-fiction question, but I relate to so much of this, and as much as I love your fiction, I also enjoyed getting to read this from you. <3