(no subject)

Spent the evening with U. yesterday after dropping the easter bunnies off at my sister's.

On the one hand it was nice, talking about a lot of personal things, family related issues, problems... there's always a kind of basic satisfaction in sharing and knowing you're not alone.

On the other and... there's also a vague, lingering dissatisfaction, when after five hours you've come around full circle to your respective issues with your bodies and society's norms, not that she has so much more reason to complain than I do. And then on to her stormy relationship again.

It's perhaps unfair to feel this when for once (not that I know how long it'll last; or why it happened) I'm in a better place mentally and emotionally, less insecure, but at the same time I couldn't quite help the feeling that at the end of such a conversation there should be, if not a solution, than at least a sense of moving on, of reaching out to something. Saying some things out loud for once certainly is helpful, but the relief doesn't entirely dispel a feeling of stagnation that I sometimes resent even in my own lj entries.

But again, it's unfair to blame someone for doing what I myself have been doing for so long, just because I'm, for whatever reason, lucky enough to feel slightly different at the moment. Solutions, revelations? *shrug* Perhaps they don't exist. Happiness... I've come to think recently that our social values forster entirely unrealistic expectations with the unspoken obligation that you're supposed to be happy all the time, implying that there's something wrong with you if you aren't. I enjoy reading at the moment, different ideas, perspectives of things, thinking, wirting, and this matters to me now.

I don't feel like making myself unhappy, making myself feel deficient because of my lack of relationships. What's the point, after all. It's not as if love will come from angsting about its absence.

I want to be someone I can look in the eye again, that's what matters most at the moment.

I have been going over this for so long in my mind... right now, at this point - maybe it's spring, maybe something else - I kind of want out of this vicious circle of depression and self-hatred. I want to shed this feeling of worthlessness.

(Not that I'd know how to convey this feeling to someone else, so that doesn't help her at all)



[[Note to self, buy potting soil. If nothing else gets done today I might at least re-pott the plant. It has certainly developed plenty of roots by now...]]


[ETA: I'm entirely too familiar with the neagtive mood icons, too... I don't think in almost two years of livejournaling I've ever used hopeful.]

gratuitous picture post...

(stolen from some russian site...)


[ETA: lj doesn't seem to get this daylight saving time thing?! *sigh*]

spam, spam, spam...

Hm. The meme I bastardised a couple of days ago.... It's actually supposed to one's ten most important/formative/influential books.

1. R.Kipling, The Jungle Books, or rather, Das Dschungelbuch: I don't even know why I would single out this one from my children's books as particularly influential, and in any case after twenty years it's nearly impossible to tell which, if any book had a influence, but somehow I have fond memories of the beautifully illustrated edition I had. And unlike the Greek mythology my father used to read to us, this was always my book. There is some connection, I can't quite define... early escapism, perhaps?

2. E.M.Forster, Maurice: It's either this or A Room with a View, but at a toss, Maurice. I've since come to prefer both A Passage to India and The Longest Journey, but this was the first book by Forster I read, in German translation after I'd seen the movie, later in English. I still like it - I chose Forster for his emphasis on the importance of personal honesty, something that pervades all his writing, but in a sense this novel with its defiant insistence on a happy ending, even if as a result it had to remain unpublished, is proof that he was very serious about what he believed in. Also my first real exposure to gay literature.

3. Patricia McKillip, The Riddle Master Trilogy: I guess there ought to be at least one SF/fantasy book on the list, seeing as at one point of my life this genre made up a great part of my reading. As far as I remember, the first fantasy book I ever read - I recall checking out the German translation from the library - and one I still like, unlike e.g. Tolkien, who I've grown rather less fond of, or, god help me, Mercedes Lackey, who I cringe at the thought of ever having read at all.

4. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, for the reason already given.

5. Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy, ditto.

6. Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoires d'Hadrien [Memoirs of Hadrian]: If I have to chose between her books it's this one. Aside from the reason given before, it has a special place in my mind, and not only because of the person who gave it to me. Some books/characters you connect with easily, others... there is a connection, but not necessarily of easy familiarity or ready understanding, and those books open a door, widen your horizon, push you to another mental level, however you want to phrase it. This was one of them.

7. Derek Jarman, Modern Nature: Shook up my notions about gender, sexuality etc... I also fell in love with his garden. I remember reading it one summer on the train to the excavations in Enns, and one of the students from our group, who'd earlier expressed her disgust at 'that scene' in The Crying Game picked it up. I don't really know what she thought, except that it must have finally convinced her that I was lesbian.

8. Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation [The Civilizing Process], cf. the earlier post.

9. Clive Barker, Sacrament. Hard decision. I'll stick with Sacrament, not only because it was the first of his novels I read, but because it's perhaps more personal, less diverse than most of his other books, the story more condensed and the message clearer in a sense. The moment when Rosa and Jacob realise that they're part of one being and all the pain came from having forgotten this... very beautiful, a wonderful reworking of the platonic myth.

10. Thoman Mann, Buddenbrooks: Again, an almost impossible decision. I really believe the most interesting thing will be the balance/interaction/comparison between the novels and diaries, but if I had to decide on one single book.... *sigh* Maybe, but only maybe. Der Zauberberg was the first one I read, and it still very much fascinates me; Doktor Faustus is the more psychologically and artistically intriguing, but Buddenbrooks almost shocked me with its sheer perfection, the brilliance of the language, the mixture of humour and tragedy... and it firmly hooked me.