the deep moans round with many voices

Today's randomly chosen theme is: motion

Do I talk about Roberts Rules of Order or physics? Or maybe the Force: always in motion, it is. *wry*

The topic is too broad; I will pick a tiny subcategory. Let me talk about walking.

So, I enjoy walking! It is my standard form of exercise, and one that I have sneakily arranged my life around. Admittedly this began as an arrangement of financial necessity, but it's one I perpetuate on purpose. I could probably afford a car (and car insurance, and parking fees, and gas) if I moved somewhere out in the more rural suburbs of Ithaca where housing prices are significantly cheaper, but Ithaca has a pretty damn good public bus system and as mentioned before, I enjoy walking.

It's also a useful way to get around my own mental stumbling blocks. I am bad at doing exercise as a Thing of its own. But if I've set up my life such that I have to walk everywhere I am interested in going (or at least walk to where I can catch a bus), then I get in a bunch of exercise as a necessary byproduct of doing stuff I have to do anyway.

I'm not as good with hills or stairs as I used to be, though. This is because I have taken to walking into town and catching a bus up East Hill instead of walking into town and then walking up the hill, and also because I live in a ground floor apartment rather than a second-floor walk-up. I keep vaguely meaning to do something about that, but as mentioned before, I am bad at doing exercise as a Thing of its own and my lizard brain is perfectly well aware that there are nice comfortable buses to take me up to Collegetown. *sigh*

Today's randomly chosen theme is: benign joys

A brief and non-comprehensive list:

1. Walking beside running water
2. Being in a boat on a lake
3. Reading a good book
4. Reading good fanfic
5. Browsing the internet for lovely items (earrings, socks, home decor, art, etc.) that I have no intention of buying
6. Watching rain or snow fall from inside a nice warm house
7. Looking at tangible evidence of a task completed and saying, "See! I did that!"
8. Smiling at babies and having them smile back
9. Gardening
10. Singing (alone or in a group)
11. Eating good food (alone or in company)
12. Long conversations with people one enjoys spending time with
13. Waking up and actually feeling rested
14. Petting cats and dogs
15. Hugs
16. Finding exactly the right word
17. Solving a math problem and feeling that lovely intangible weight of an equation in perfect balance

There are many others, but I think that's a decent start. :)

I skipped a week, but whatever!

Today's randomly chosen theme is: the first white paper of chance

I believe a "white paper" is some kind of technical government term, but I am just going to talk about paper in general.

So, coincidentally, I was talking to Nick about paper colors on Wednesday near the end of our long conversation, and it turns out we have radically different feelings about white paper. I find white paper intimidating (unless it's computer paper I'm folding and cutting into snowflakes, because in that case the whole point is to mangle it). But for writing, white paper tends to jam me up in a sort of... panic is the wrong word. But I feel that white paper means anything I put on it must be CORRECT, and so I get... performance anxiety, maybe?

I get around this in various ways. One is to use scrap paper, because then it's already ruined so who cares if I mess up more. The other is to use colored paper. This is why all my little notepads are yellow, because it's a friendly color and if I cross stuff out, or misspell things, or add things in weird places after the fact, it doesn't matter.

Nick, conversely, finds that using white paper means he doesn't worry about making mistakes because the white paper sort of purifies them so they don't matter, because the paper itself is so lovely. For him, colored paper jams him up because it will only compound his inevitable goof-ups instead of salving them.

So we both have this notion that white paper is somehow good or pure, but I feel that my mistakes ruin it and therefore feel guilty, whereas he feels that the paper uplifts his mistakes and therefore feels comforted.

...

The whole thing is, of course, ridiculous, but cultural expectations are powerful things and we all interact with them in idiosyncratic ways. *wry*

Today's randomly chosen theme is: eyeliner

I have never worn eyeliner in my life and never intend to.

There's a lot of makeup I've never worn in my life, actually -- everything except lipstick (borrowed from my mom), eyeshadow (borrowed from Nick), the blush I tried on once when I was, like, ten, and the thick stage makeup I had to wear for a high school production of Kiss Me Kate (which gave me a horrible outbreak of pimples). I haven't even worn that much since... I think Nick's college graduation, about twelve years ago? And I have every intention of never wearing any makeup again. This is partly because I just don't like the feel of it on my face, and partly because that's not an aspect of performative femininity I have any interest in.

I suppose if I didn't have glasses, I might wear a bit of concealer under my eyes because I have really dark and noticeable bags there and people ask me if I'm okay in very worried tones when they notice them, but other than that I don't see the point. I have a perfectly reasonable human face, so why spend a lot of time making it look different? This is probably related to my general indifference toward hairstyles and clothes that involve a lot of layers or fuss. I want a style that looks clean and generally put together and takes the least time possible when I'm getting ready in the morning: therefore, plain black or khaki pants, plain black socks, plain black or brown shoes, and t-shirt style shirts. The shirts can have patterned fabric, and occasionally I switch up with black boots, but that's as fancy as I get.

(My one exception is earrings. I am all in favor of pretty and/or sparkly earrings! Browsing Etsy for gorgeous earrings I will never purchase is one of my current minor pleasures.)

I find a lot of performative femininity fascinating from a cultural perspective, and also fascinating to dissect what parts I feel social pressure to participate in versus what parts you would literally have to pay me to care less about. Like, I do feel social pressure about weight and body hair, though I've resolved most of the former by not wearing clothes intended for display (because I am pretty asexual and aromantic and seriously do not give a shit about looking attractive to anyone) and the latter by always wearing pants so what does it matter if my legs are hairy. But I have never felt social pressure about hair length/style and makeup and fashionable clothing, which I assure you is not because people haven't tried to apply that pressure to me. It just seems to roll off. This has made my life a lot less stressful over the years, but to this day I can't tell you WHY those things have never made an impression on me. I wish I could, because it seems like a trick a lot of people might find useful. *wry*

In summary, brains are weird, performative femininity is a fascinating mess, and I'm quite glad not to be sticking pencils anywhere near my poor delicate eyeballs.

Today's randomly chosen theme is: monotonous primitivism

I know very little about primitivism as an art school, though some works within that tradition are interesting, nice to look at, or occasionally both.

Primitivism as a social philosophy strikes me as inherently sociopathic, considering that the renunciation of modern civilization would essentially consign millions of people to death (through lack of the medical technology and social support systems that keep them alive), if not billions of people through renunciation of intensive agriculture. I think it's also inherently hypocritical to consider human technology something that must be gotten rid of when things like beaver dams are "natural," because the difference is really only one of scale. Life changes its environment to suit itself -- even plants do this. Furthermore, primitivism is inherently futile because it's human to create and connect, so how anyone expects to change human nature to remove those impulses is anyone's guess, particularly if your ideal social organization removes any way to coordinate large areas and populations, let alone compel them via force.

(...Apparently I have more thoughts on primitivism than I realized. Okay.)

Primitivism as a diet philosophy is just nonsensical, considering primitive humans' approach to food was basically "is it edible? then eat it!" and also would probably kill me given my allergies to most raw fruit and many raw vegetables.

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In writing news, I have started scene 4 of "Guardian" ch. 17, and have written ~225 words so far. This doesn't need to be a very long scene, so I think I can probably knock it off in another day or two after which I can go back to scenes 2 and 3 to flesh them out and make sure scene 3 is hitting the right emotional notes. (Scene 2 is already fine on that front. I just need to make sure I've done the layout correctly so readers won't get lost when I start moving pieces around in scene 3.)