![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguist- being a kept woman:
When I worry about who I am and what I'm doing with my life and all that nonsense, Andrew used to tell me that I could live with him and be a kept woman. That made me smile.
That's what I seem to be these days. How else could I explain it? I'm no breadwinner, I just sometimes make the sandwiches. I am here not for anything I can do, but just who I am. It's sometimes difficult to wrap my brain around this delightful notion. - contradictions:
My ink-stained teenage soul realized one day that it seemed to be composed entirely of contradictions. It probably thought it was unique. Teenage souls usually do. But it's not, certainly not in this respect.
I like that everyone's a walking pile of contradictions. Some seem more obviously so than others, but I think most people have the opposites of their familiar or favoured traits lurking somewhere; I am not the only introverted extrovert, the only sentimental cynic, the only warily reckless person in the world. - displacement activity:
I've been thinking about this one a lot in recent weeks. By now I would've certainly spontaneously combusted if it weren't for displacement activities.
It's gotten so I can almost feel my brain struggling to float away when real life bears down too hard and I don't know what to do.
Usually it floats to books or other people and my real or imagined interactions with them. - freedom:
It has certainly become interesting, especially in the past few years, to see if we really will give up liberty for a little temporary security.
I've been told that those who do that deserve neither liberty or security, and I'm inclined to agree.
It's especially disappointing when the security sought is not even really granted by giving up civil l liberties; it seems more likely that relinquishing them only makes us all the more insecure. - lake wobegon:
Oh, Lake Wobegon. It's my hometown as much as it's Garrison Keillor's, you know. I know it well: the absurdity, the nostalgia, the indiscretions, the monotony, everything under the magnifying glass of a small town where everybody always knows everything...
His stories about the place make me smile ruefully (or giggle) in wistful recognition as well as cringe in horror and thankfulness that I've managed to escape. More or less. - manchester:
And, on the other end of the spectrum...
Manchester got its original name (Mamucium) because the Romans built it on a hill that, they thought, looked breast-shaped.
Manchester has famously good curries.
Manchester's Pride festival is one of the biggest in the world.
Andrew makes a point of telling me everything that was invented here, from computers to Vimto.
He downplays most of the music, though, and if you, say, happen to be from the same state as Prince, you can fight back by shouting things like "The Smiths! And Oasis!" at him. - old english:
One of those things I never would've imagined I'd take a class in until I did, Old English fascinated me as part of my Grammar & Language class, which was taught by someone who specializes in (and obviously adores) Anglo-Saxon England.
Our slight exposure to it there--I had to recite the Lord's Prayer in Old English ... and I can still do it!--was enough to convince me that I really did want to take the class she was offering on the subject the next semester.
I had a great time with it--translating the poetry, the hagiographies, learning how to decipher scribes' handwriting, savouring the puns and riddles--and was just getting into the swing of this linguistics thing when suddenly my life fell apart and I dropped out of college.
I still wish I knew more about this sort of lovely academic nonsense, though. - record shops:
Not the chain ones, of course, if I can help it. I much prefer the secondhand type, a certain kind of ragged charm you can find in handwritten signs, albums that may be organised by genre or alphabetical order but then again may not be, music blaring through the speakers because it's someone's favourite new thing rather than because it's corporately mandated...
I like music with personality, and when possible I like to get it someplace that has a little personality of its own. - snail mail:
The more electronic communication makes it obsolete, the more some people fetishize it, and I fear I may be one of those.
Everything there is to be said about this, though, has already been said--how nice it is to see an envelope with the recognisable handwriting of a friend, to know that someone sat for a little bit with pen and paper and thought of you and wanted you to know it, to greedily examine the inside of the envelope to see about the possibility of some trinket, some photo or cartoon clipped from the newspaper or page from a coloring book colored for you or rose petals or whatever it is you might get away with expecting.
Everything has been said, by better wordsmiths than me, so I'll just leave it at that. - waxing froo-froo:
A phrase purloined from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
riddley_walker, who comes up with many phrases worth stealing (but who also makes the me think he's the sort of person who'd advocate playing with the language for yourself rather than stealing someone else's turn of phrase.
But something about it, maybe the combination of waxing--which customarily finds itself attached to words like poetic or eloquent--and froo froo delights me, and seems kinda like how I write too, at times, so I wanted to make note of this and not forget it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 12:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 12:39 pm (UTC)I found him from your friends list, of course, but I think he'd make me think of you anyway; there seems to be something about the things you observe and the way you talk about them that makes you two alike. There's something there, I'm not sure what it is, but I want it. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 12:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 01:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 01:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 01:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 02:56 pm (UTC)And wasn't he supposed to like, kidnap you or steal you from your family or something?
-=confused=-
That is a good point!
Date: 2005-09-20 06:22 pm (UTC)Re: That is a good point!
Date: 2005-09-21 01:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 07:39 am (UTC)If only
Date: 2005-09-20 06:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 04:37 pm (UTC)and yeah feel free to use it, or any other turn of phrase i come up with any time you want. i may use some of yrs in exchange tho.
inventing yr own is good, but there's something to be said for excange and copycatting too.
if you are doing that (and perticipating in word games and other sillyness) with someone, it means you are in community with them, or that you want to be.
it's very friendly.
(p.s. i'm blushig a wee bit from being appreciated above. i like both of you, too, and like that you know each other. maybe we ought to form a secret society or something, preferably one that plans to take over the world using the innovative tactic of not trying to take over much of anything)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-22 08:22 pm (UTC)Yes. And it's certainly true in this case.
And I really wanna be part of that secret society.