recursivity

Dreamed last night that I met misia's Ushi. There were jokes about a "house moose," because that's the kind of thing my subconscious thinks is just knee-slappingly funny. Apparently. And then I wrote a LJ post about meeting Ushi.

Look! Inside the little doll is ... ANOTHER little doll!

slight epiphany: theatricality

I was thinking about the "reconstructing the crime" scene in The Five Red Herrings and why I'm rather fond of it when in general I loathe that kind of thing, and I realized something about myself.

Viz., I am only comfortable with theatricality when it is clearly marked as such, by being projected on a movie screen, transmitted to a television screen, or performed on a stage. It doesn't have to be a proscenium stage, and I don't mind when actor/characters break the fourth wall (I'd better not, considering how goofy I am about metatextuality and metatheatricality), but even audience participation bits give me the creeps, and street theater, charades, role-playing, even those horrible ice-breaker games that I should have made my students play when I was a TA and never did ... I dislike them all because they're not quarantined.

I went to the Punch & Judy show at the World Fantasy Con and stood in the back, not because I was late (although I was) and certainly not because it was a better vantage point (hello, myopia!), but because I didn't want Punch to "notice" me. I didn't join in any of the audience call and response bits, same way I don't sing when a group not specifically a trained and rehearsed chorus starts singing in public. (Singing in the car is an entirely different matter, and you will stop me only by ripping my vocal cords out.) I don't want the theatrical and the "real" to bleed together. It makes me uncomfortable, twitchy, and intensely self-conscious. It's like shyness, but it's not the same thing. I am also paralytically shy (tho' getting better), so I know whereof I speak. And it's not about performance. I loved acting as a teenager, and more recently, I've never had stage-fright before giving a paper or being on a panel. And I love attending plays and concerts. This isn't a Puritanical antitheatrical stand; it's about category violation.

This attitude toward the theatrical is why I don't want to find out what LARPs are like, or play Mafia, or get involved in an RPG campaign. From a theoretical and academic perspective, I find my own attitude appalling. But personally, I can tell that this is one of those deep-rooted philosophical quirks that one occasionally runs across in oneself; for some part of me a little below the conscious mind, this is a highly principled objection. This is one boundary that I seem to need to BE a boundary.

Now that I know it, I don't know what to do with it. But it is a gift to have a moment like this that allows you to make sense of a small piece of yourself.

This is Hell, nor am I out of it.

This is pameladean's fault.

Well, it's not Pamela's fault I'm going to Hell. But it is her fault that I now know exactly where I'll end up.

( The City of Dis )

At least I know I'll be in good company.

bookkeeping

DL (2), Chapter 1: 252 words
DL (2), Chapter 4: 849 words

Total: 1101 words

A lot of this was replacing a political system that clearly wasn't going to work with one that would. So probably more like 600 words actual progress. But I wrote my way to the next boggy bit, so at least that's something.

Lots of treacherous ground here in Chapter Four because I'm spinning off into the abyss from the original narrative. The original narrative, frankly, blew dead bears and I'm very happy to be fixing it, but it does mean that I have to keep reminding myself of new possibilities and not just walking along in the same old rut.

Oh well. If it was easy, I'd be bored by now.

Verdict: Decent, esp. considering doom & gloom of the past couple of days.