The Fanstastic Ms. Fox

Often when I reflect on my life, I criticize myself. I try to figure out a better way of solving the problem. But so many problems are context-specific; tied to a situation that will never repeat; tied to not knowing things that I know now.

I'll do better next time, I think.

Next time? The next time I'm a teenager? The next time I had a strange self-sheltered naiivite that I've now overcome?

Even if we suppose there's a life after this, it's like a written exam: you can take notes all you want, but you don't get to take them in with you.

This review of Greg Bear's sci-fi novel Legacy is juxtaposed to the next-to-sci-fi experience that is Transition because it is the neatest metaphor I have found to date.

It contains spoilers and probably errors.


This analogy occurs to me in reference to transition - A process I feel that I am now mostly on the other side of.

Stunned; I spent a lot of time in that other place, and it was killing me. I think. Was I actually there? It seems so distant. But I remember when I think about it, and it slips out in conversation.

"Here" is a strange place; not quite what I left  more than half a lifetime ago, but it's familiar. Both it and I are changed. I thought about here often, but thought I'd never get here.

So being here is good.

But it's even better to not be there

- - - I was sure I was gonna die down there.

Is this real? Did this really happen? I suppose so.

Am I going to wake up tomorrow and have all this stripped from me? I don't see how. And if that loomed, I would not let it.

But the threat seems real, just having lived with the alternative long enough.

I guess I get used to it, and learn how to live from here.

I mean, what else do you do?

[I've made a little edit]

The renaming/rite/of-passage/initiation is a little less than two weeks off now and it is dawning on me that this is a pretty big deal.

With "Sasha" I let an experimental pragmatic name hang on me to see how it affected my balance, so to speak. With "Amy," I am not only taking on a new name; grafting it on rather than simply wearing it. I am not only divesting myself of "Sasha," returning it to the not-so-big pool of transitional names. I am also discarding "Graham" as a name from my extended adolescence, and shedding some of the things that go with it. Furthermore, this also doubles as an adulthood ritual (and my Archaeology assignment).

It's also a symbolic death, and judging by the countdown on my wall calendar, this particular variant of my identity has about twelve days left on this Earth.

On that note, here's what may be the most useful advice that I've picked up in the last twenty-six and some years....

Formative moments in my sociopolitical/epistemological paradigm:

"Grade Three"

The Rule:
"You must mark each-other's papers with a red pencil-crayon.
If you do not have a red pencil-crayon, borrow one from the child in front of you."

I remember noticing:
(a) the red pencil crayons were defective, as the lead often popped out the back when you pressed on them
(b) the functional ones were in demand and wearing down;
(c) we were allowed one extra set per year
(d) our class of thirty children was down to two functional red pencil crayons, and this caused considerable delays during markng

So I started using orange.

Other kids noticed and followed my lead.

This did not go over well.

I recall other, similar, failed attempts at management.

I respect leaders that demonstrate their relative expertise. Others I do not so much rebel against as ignore. This is happening in Biology, where I do the labs more or less in the way that I see fit, while correcting mistakes on the handouts. My marks are okay.

I make sense of it by concluding that all this BS was a useful experience, much as outlined in this thesis on educating gifted children.

I've finally started to spin this into something I've wanted for a long time: being able to shrug off personal affronts. Someone can tell me off and I can address it, but in other cases, I can turn around and say "wow, that's... really weird - I guess that I'll igoner it." I think that some of this has to do with being in a supportive social environment; and some of it has to do with knowing that I can fix, ignore or complain as I see fit.

It's a good way to feel in a situation like this
(I am not asking for you to comment, let alone anonymously.).

Here, I am not just referring to the posts about me, or even the blog itself, so much as the "debate" surrounding the post-impeachment student society. The impeachment needed to happen, and it only succeeded because of the extended labour of about a hundred volunteers. Since then, I have heard many complaints. Perhaps a handful of people raise siginificant, thought-out qualms; others are simly deficient in information; but most of the objections make up for in vitriol what they lack in critical thought.

It's contstant and it's wearing. I can now ignore what pertains only to me (the gender comments confuse rather than offend), but when it touches on my social circle and the work we do, then I'm not sure how to deal with it. Guess that's the next thing I'm gonna learn.

Life: it never stops until it's over.

Happy New Year all.

Nineday is the close of week zero and a good time for summaries and resoultions:

In other news: to date, four people have stated that "Sasha" doesn't sound, or simply isn't, an androgynous name. Two said it's a boy's name; two, a girl's.

Two years back, I felt inadequate because I was doing less than my share of the work: the other students were toiling harder and longer than I. I became a good student, but I forgot that that I'd done that and it was enough, so this semester I overcompensated by being a "good" full-time student and working one day a week and learning hapkido and volunteering and I'm still looking for a relationship of some stripe. Oops.

I realized this while I was disassocating in class. Disassociative introspection is just one of the interesting and amusing side-effects of your subconscious beating you on the head.

I was wondering what I should be doing with my life. My subconscious is telling me that I already know what I want to, or need to, or am here on this earth to, do with my life.I've been avoiding it because it's a intimidating and weird. More on this at some indefinite later point.