Memes! It's fun to be interviewed - it makes you feel important!

mimerki asked me 5 questions-  I'll ask you 5 questions too.  If you want me to.

(1) In some ways, you embody the notion that everyone else is also the hero of their own story for me. We knew each other in passing but our life-stories didn't really intersect. Whose story do you watch from the outside, knowing you are a spear-carrier in their drama whilst the main player in your own?

Oh wow that’s weird! So long ago, I think when we were face-to-face acquainted I had this idea, rooted in my experience of the time & the kinds of media that were present. At that time you may recall that the vision of beauty that was going around was shifting – and I was stuck being tall dark & handsome while everyone I was into was looking for Dave Bowie – so that was a weird time to be alive – plus I’m a bit taller than just tall and I’ve always been a weirdo – so I fell into this idea that I was not the protagonist in a story – in really any story. It made sense to me then – I don’t have blue eyes, I don’t have personal conflicts or identity issues. I’ll never be Luke Skywalker – I’ll never be caught up in ideals or suffer an antagonist. Really I fell to the Voltron 5-man-band idiom & I was the Big Guy.

As time went on I got the hang of it though – people want to be in a story but they don’t always have the sense or ambition to invent one. You can lead people – you can get them to follow, interested and attentive, just by having a superior plan. That’s probably reflected fairly well in my oldest Livejournals. I got tired of waiting around for people to want to do a thing and just started initiating events – things for them to do – I call this ‘wearing the captain’s hat’ or ‘batmanning’. You can be the batman and have the plan & then your people, the ones who go with you – they’re the robins.

This stuff is tiring though, and expensive. Not for nothing is batman rich – you want to be the batman you’ve got to buy your robins a lot of dinners and drinks – sometimes outfits. Worse than that is when you start to fall into ideas about Loyalty. Loyalty is what you expect from people who you aren’t offering enough. If your job wants or expects loyalty – it means that they aren’t paying you enough. It’s a weird despotic virtue upheld by tyrants – or well – some less hyperbolic version of that. People have their own lives & you can’t ask them to discard themselves in service to you – that’s a misstep that’s made.

Anyhow seeing other people want to have their own lives – seeing that and having opinions about the lives they want – that’s the empathic spark that really helped me write the story around myself. Make myself the narrative center of my own life – Prufrockian as it may be.

Now, you ask about spear-carrying and I hear ‘robin’. I’m a sometimes robin. Ceding agency is one of those things you can do if you’re real secure in your identity. So I’ve robined for my pal Bridgit a bunch of times – exploring the abandoned buildings, the weird lower-world of the city. Or, when she was smaller my own little Daughter- who was once more directed & interested in exploring. I still think of myself in these narrative terms – I’m the heavy, I’m the one who’s around who prevents you from being scared because if there are problems… Or I’m the weirdo wizard… I think knowing about people’s own identity as the protagonist helps me to blend in as a type to match & suit them – I like playing lancer because it’s easy & satisfying & because I’ve periodically felt guilty for having an excessively narcissistic impulse that casts me as the center of other people’s lives.

So, actively, I’ll help & participate in the life of anyone who asks & who’s story is compelling to me – passively – I’m very interested in the direction that most people’s lives go.

(2) What lost thing of your childhood do you wish you could share with young Miss A?

Having not much liked childhood this is hard. So over the weekend we watched The Monster Squad – a movie I watched when I was her age. That was in Matt Miller’s basement – with the bumper pool & the beer ad overhead lights. We played NES after that – I think, Athena. Terrible game. At the used book store they had the first 6 dragonlance books in very good condition for basically nothing – so I got her those and she’s been reading them and liking them the way I did… I think in terms of media preferences there’s a fair continuity that’s fun to share – in the way you post youtube videos & links on the internet – here’s a thing I liked from being a kid!

And I’m lucky my kid likes what I like – I mean, she could be football obsessed or like, excited about church. Anyhow – media sharing a shitty version of experience and of the things I did as a kid that she has not is Travel. She asked me about flying on a plane & I think by the time I was her age – shoot, I’d probably put a few hundred hours in the sky. I think I’d done transcontinental flight four or five times by then & she doesn’t even have a passport. This is a shared-parenting thing & a lack of desire thing on my part – I don’t have the time I’d need nor the money required and, frankly the desire to travel.

There used to be this thing in our house – the Fairy Cupboard. So it’s a glass doored little curio cabinet that I found on the side of the street & then I hung it up on a wall in her room and for a long time I’d put in notes & little bauble treasures – and she’d write notes- to the Fairy you get it? Our house fairy. Once the fairy folded up a big map of the world and asked for her friend to circle the places she’d like to go… Well, the Fairy Cupboard was a fun exercise but that kiddo never did get the hang of caring about the larger world. I think Tokyo is really the only spot on her list, owing to Pokemon principally.

(3) We have discussed alternate timelines before. Is there one where you left Ohio? Where did you go? Why? (If not, why not?)

So some Narcissus & Goldmund huh? Another friend of mine tried using this as a structure to describe our arcs – this was long ago & he was much more prosaic in his adventuring path – hitchhiking, homelessness the whole journey into the world. I remember then I was sort of resentful of this idea, that I was somehow in stasis. I take your meaning though. Here are the things: After high school I thought to go to the pacific northwest because it was the ‘90’s and the done thing. I was… for lack of a less acrimonious term – conned into sticking around with my family. After college I was going to go to east asia because it was the end of the ‘90’s and the done thing – and then I stayed with my family because they begged me to. And then I was going to go away again and then I had a baby. I still want to go away from Cleveland. Especially now as winter looms. Now – there are all types of idealized thoughts – imaginary selves.

I can tell if I’m going to get depressed because I’ll think about these things too much – they usually revolve around one or another lady – one that it didn’t work out with but if only… But if only is a road I don’t take very often now. Things are good and steady & I’m the type that likes steady.

But your question kind of asks a different question. You know how people play the lottery and it’s a dollar they spend on a fantasy of having money? To me… That doesn’t work, I mean – if I’m going to have a rich fantasy life, I’m not going to fantasize about having money. I’ll fantasize about being an earthbender or a space explorer y’know? (I’d earthbend all the roads & highways into & out of the city into rubble, I’d raise pyramids and ziggurats from the ground and an immense sphinxlike object from out of the lake – it would loom, terrible & daunting over a city that I’d build to suit me).

In the end the moves I thought about making were somehow less desirable than staying here. And I’ve never had a real strong push from here. Push & pull are an immigration thing – you need strong pulls but a stronger push – and despite all – the living here is easy, the big city charms are appealing & there’s a lot of rabbit holes to fall down if you look closely. I think I’ve had a lifetime to get to know this place & I prefer that level of detail over a cursory view of a lot of places.

I’ll confess to one timeline that I’d like which is the one where I somehow got it together to live & work in Rome. That’s the city for me, baroque & stone & ancient, I don’t have the imagination to think of a job I would have or how I would live – and really if I did – probably I’d have done that thing.

(4) You wake up tomorrow and the moon is the wrong shape, the wrong color. What do you do?

Have you ever seen that thing where the ice in the upper atmosphere lenses and causes the full moon to display a halo? It’s really startling, if you’ve never seen it, and more so if you don’t know what causes it. When I did see that I hollered for a lot of people to come see, “Come and See!”

I like your experiment though – I’m imagining a scenario where I notice these things – that the moon has visible oceans or clouds – that it’s got rings or is a cube – the 10,000 mile to a side city of God floating for a thousand years above Jerusalem… I see this and everyone else thinks it’s the way it is, and that I’m the weird one, I’m out of the loop and in a different continuity. When this happens you’re supposed to go to the Library that’s what they do in fiction about this kind of scenario – but I’d… I’d google it up – what about Artemis/Diana – do the Japanese still inexplicably have a sun goddess and a moon god? What about Moon River my huckleberry friend? Are there bad moons rising? I think, I’d assimilate right up – maybe not ever quite get used to it – but still – who’s really ever used to the moon? It’s always something to look at for a moment at least, whenever you happen to spot it in the sky.

(5) We are entering the season of ritual gluttony. In what will you delight in your excessive consumption? Will it come with regrets?

This is something that is not applicable to me. Seriously I never regret eating or drinking too much stuff. I eat as much as I can whenever I can and drink as much as I can whenever possible. If I have limits I don’t exceed them. I’ve got that Liberace thing maybe- “Too much of everything is simply wonderful.”

Probably I could do without poppers and millions of dogs though.