Narcissism on the Rise

Prudence,

I thought you might get a kick out of this. The following was original published on Facebook on November 19th, at precisely 5:31pm (CST). The guidelines of the request, originating from one Danielle Burgess, were simple enough - "write a note with 16 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you."

About me? Read at your own risk.

1) My left thumb is a few centimeters stunted in comparison to the right thumb. After hiding it in embarassment for years I was given new perspective by a friend of a similarly afflicted girl and have named it my "lucky thumb." When the economy falls, and hitch hiking because a major means of transportation again, its luck will see me through.

2) It took me way too long to realize I was a writer. It seems like everyone knew but me. In adolesence the adults in my life consistently gave me journals, and I thought they were just encouraging my expression for sake of my mental health (it at times was somewhat precarious). Then in Film School I was told of one of Laurence Rosenthal's classes from Alison, decided to sit in, and realized that I loved writing. That I was born to write. Then the whole of my life made sense.

3) I've been suffering from insomnia as of late. Almost like an anxiety; I have to be sure that the sun has risen before I can go to sleep and even then its only for a few hours. Fortunately, theres been some interesting movies on late at night. The Little Girl Who Live Down the Lane played last night, I had never before heard of it. I found it disturbing but oddly enjoyable. Now, drum roll please, they've been kind enough to play Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet. I find myself muttering along with it, and thinking about the past. A dangerous pastime between dusk and dawn.

4) The last two months of the year, when everything outside is dying and the holidays come with all their advertisements and television specials, I feel sevenfold all the emotions and longings I battle the other ten months to supress in order to keep moving forward. I dislike Christmas for every reason everyone else enjoys it.

5) I used to be BIG into Xena when I was younger and very bored. When I was 10 I made a Xena website with all these horribly thrown together graphics thats still accessible off yahoo. I also wrote Harry Potter fan fiction before I was in school. I think only Kelsey has ever read it. Those stories, too, were pretty terrible. So there is a Nerd in me, a weird sort of Geek thats lurking under the surface. I must keep it supressed for now.

6) I'm very sentimental. Memories are my treasure, and an odd source of security. I've kept tokens of my past, and journals of mine. I even have a long archive of emails, myspace messages, and the likes which I review for amusement or solace. I read through my past like tea leaves, as though theres a nameless something I'm looking for, that I need to understand to see my future. What invariably strikes me is the evolution and decline of my handwriting, how it depicts my state of mind at the time. I also look at what was bothering me, and I laugh at how little my melancholy reality meant in the greater scheme of things.

7) People fascinate me. Everything about them. I love to hear people talk about themselves, about their past, what they tell, what they conceal, even what they lie. How they view themselves, how they view others. This is my obsession. This is my thrill. It gets me out of my own mind, and focusing on others thoughts for a change. The best place for this is in Airports. Rick and I would make up stories about the people we saw while biding time before leaving Australia. More often than not they'd catch us laughing at them, and what was funny became hysterically so.

8) I've always felt like people saw something in me that wasn't there. They may have seen a tragic orphan who had been through the dictionary a few times and assumed that greatness would ensue. It was the expectations of others that drove me to excel, to suceed. It drove me into secrecy about my flaws and the insanity that naturally follows said secrecy. Then one day in September of 2007 I was ordered to look behind me and confront the individuals that were responsible for my sucess or failure, and there was no one. No one cared about my dreams except me. This realization began me on the road to taking responsibility for what I want without regard to what people think of my plans. I would welcome human guidance, but I am no longer looking for it, or relying on it.

9) I recently adopted a cat. Her name is Starla Magic Powers. (Pictures available upon request.) For me it was love at first sight, and the guilt of knowing her owner was going to leave her in a box somewhere if he couldn't find a home for his unexpected kittens. I seem to have administered a little too much TLC, and now its impossible when home to get her to leave me alone.

10) My first fully formed memories began when I was alone, knowing my mother was dead and not knowing where the rest of my family was, in the house of a stranger who didn't love me. All twenty years of my life I have never felt like I belong anywhere. Until I met this guy. We're at two ends of the sociological and life experience spectrum, and he too is an outsider. It seems like he completes me. The sound of his voices makes me feel what I think "home" must be like.

11) Its taken me about two days to finish this. I keep saving the draft because I don't know what else to include, and for fear I'm making it too wordy and sad.

12) Its a real struggle for me to be on time. Its not that I am incapable. When there is important business afoot I always show up in a timely fashion, but I often stress due to my bad time management skills and my all-over-the-place-constantly thought form. I'm sadly known to keep people waiting, which is terrible because I hate waiting.

13) I got glasses today. It feels like I'm seeing in HD. It took a very trippy car ride to Kim's house to adjust to them, but now I don't want to ever take them off. I realized how much I couldn't see without them. I wish they made glasses for life.

14) I really miss LaVaCa. When we were broke and virtually jobless. I miss singing our silly songs, and I know life changes. I miss it none the less. It felt a lot like family. No more be said.

15) I collect 2006 dollars, and 1979 quarters. The dollars seem to always get spent on cigarettes at some point, but I keep renewing my drive to collect them.

16) I guess since everyone else touched on Christianity, so here I go too. This marks my biggest change since Film School. I hate church. "Because it reminds you that you're sinning?" No, the reason I go to church is because I know I have problems with sins that make me lose sight and control of my life. Everything I've worked for thus far in my life has been sacraficed on an altar to vices I didn't even know I had before I ventured off. The reason I hate church is because I never find the answers I'm looking for. I never find the reason I lost, the connection with others who are struggling, the hope of a solution. I don't even find people studying the Bible so much as punctuating their rants with scripture, and a lot of politics, ego, and "us against them". Now, I love Christians and my life has been changed by the kindness I encountered from that community as an adolescent. I hope I never forget that. I love God and will never cease to study the Bible, and to sing along to worship music, nor will I forget the kindness and mercy He has shown me and how different my life would have been had He not interacted personally with me. However, the problems I face now are more complex, dire, and apparantly impossible for Christianity to understand or even address. It upsets me because its not JUST me. Light isn't light but that it shines in darkness. So what are we doing church? What are we aiming to be?

x Valerie

Keeping Up Appearances

Prudence,

While there are many things I admire about you, I will never understand your obsession with appearance. Perhaps it comes by merit of your geography, where you come from there is more invested in quick first impressions and little ambiguity of style. Then, it could be argued, my disinterest in considering personal aesthetic as a measuring rod is born from a lack of geographic identity or loyalties. (The only I might claim being a third world country, the theory prevails.) Perhaps an explanation of the root of these thoughts and observations is in order.

I had a very disturbing conversation a few days ago while out to lunch with an elderly couple. I was discussing with these family friends the odyssey of that day's search for work. In doing so I relayed to them the humorous image of Casey and myself driving aimless looking for a specific building. The two have never met Casey, their only understanding became my description of his gauged ears, tall emaciated frame, and that he was my roommate's boyfriend (a white lie to sidestep their overly conservative bias). The man's response, though I understand him to be a well-intentioned victim of his own simple-minded judgement, made me feel queasy.

"I wouldn't be going around with some guy - would if people think he's your boyfriend? They might wonder what you're doing hanging around with some loser."

My ears turned scarlet as I tried to hold back my own disgust at the cruelty of his advise. I then told that man that changing who I associate with on the basis on what others might think of me, or to obtain a job, is the anti-thesis of what Christ would do. (Worship of God, and love of my nephew beings the ties that bind me to these particular pair.) Moreover, loyalty to my friends might not help me climb any social ladders I sleep a whole lot better at night as someone who doesn't give up on people to make a better wage. I sensed they were quieted, but by no means convinced.

I had a similar conversation a few weeks ago. I must have told you. It upset and unsettled me more than I could process at the time, the words and insinuations lingering long after I drove away. In this particular instance, a woman I once gave that sacred pedastol "Mom" told me that I had essentially feigned religion and leadership, basically my whole identity, in High School. That the real me was a drug and sex addict, and that it was good the world finally knew. Who says something like that?

First off, those who know me best now, and at the time, disagree with her views. The word "bitch" has even been thrown out. Still, due to the regard in which I held her affection I was beside myself in self examination - was what she said to me valid? Was my a lie at the time? Was the real me my mistakes, the shortcomings I would experience on the road to adulthood? Then, I took words of wisdom I first heard from her husband's lips. "Consider the source."

I understand now that to individuals concerned entirely with appearances everything is black and white. Its simple and tidy. All important information can be easily assessed from one glance. These charges were brought against me by a woman who remodeled her house for her son's graduation party. The guest list? Only family. Yet another item my mind has difficulty fathoming - spending thousands of dollars - no! Placing one's self thousands of dollars in debt, to impress one's own family. I sympathize that she came from a small town, and the mentalities and complexes that are bred of such social stagnation. How whatever measure of open-minded perspective I have can only be attributed to the big city melting pots I found myself raised in. That, it would seem, is the difference in us and our paradigms. In a black and white world of appearance versus, its logical nemesis, the gray area, the chaos, the mess that is substance.

Furthermore, I have never encountered a person endowed of that mindset who I would consider happy. What I do observe is the never ending stress of trying to please others and gain their approval - an endeavor that will never end in satisfaction. If said individuals need to be impressed, or if their negative gossip is so terrifying, nothing, no amount of hardwood flooring or chocolate fountains, no surfeit of new clothes nor the raddest hair style, will ever be enough to satiate their shallow minds. My advice would be an examination of why that approval is needed. That, dear friend, is another letter all its own.

So this is why I do not see myself being assimilated into that worldview. Ever. Mostly I consider it essentially counterintuitive to writing. The beauty of art is showing reality in a way thats multifaceted, even when all those facets don't glisten. We scorn real-life hypocrites, yet we adore them on the screen. Because they fight the battles we try to suppress, or deny. They give us the emotional freedom to recognize our own shortcomings and mistakes, and the belief that we too can win in the end. On screen, if characters do everything right, have the newest and best everything, and no struggle, no vices, no conflict, they are... boring.


As a rule, honesty begets growth, growth finds itself completed in integrity. It all begins with the truth. So then, one must reason, that deception hinders growth. This too seems logical enough as many of those stuck in their race for appearance, priveledge and property seem the victim of some manner of - I'll say it - arrested development.

So, in essence Prudence, I care less about the brand of one's shoes, and more about where they've been. After all, old friend, the exterior doubtlessly speaks volumes, but how much of that communication is based in illusion? I'll do my best to abstain from judgment, but I can't help but hope that one day you will see that there is so much more to life than can be processed through a photo lens. More beauty to be found in honest flaws than in the pretentious endeavor to conceal them. Perhaps then the thought can be entertained that nothing about you was ever a mistake.

x Valerie