Posted by alexandra_k on November 30, 2016, at 11:55:28
In reply to Answers to Lou's request, posted by hiddenhurt on November 24, 2016, at 15:43:30
I read "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". I did read it when I was a kid. I don't think I much liked it then. It didn't speak to me much. But it spoke to me now. I cried, actually. When the other birds found him.
There are lots of seagull's here. There was a piece in the student magazine, actually, encouraging us not to think of them as screaming rat demons. I was surprised about that because I'd just arrived and I only remembered fond feelings of feeding seagulls chips at the beach. But it turns out that some of them really do shriek and scream something awful. And some of them play in the streets dodging about the cars in order to scavenge from trash bins and the like.
And some of them don't seem to. Some of them do seem to be playing with flying. But I'm not sure if they are different ones, or the same ones that have decided to burn off some of that trash-fuel. But, anyway, it was a good book. And it certainly spoke to me.
I was thinking, too, about how the mistake was to let the other birds see. I mean, it's one thing to go back and to find the birds who had expressed motivation enough to be exiled... It's another thing entirely to make ones way of life visible to the birds who hadn't... The birds who might have been happy playing in the trash and engaging in social squabbles if they had never seen a flock who were engaged in flight.
Or not? I'm not sure.
Once they see... Then some of the squabbling trash seeking ones decide to go with the flight flock for the wrong reasons. Because they see all their friends are going there...
Then you get a bird who says 'it's not about flight! What I want is the food! But not just any old food.... Flight is all about hunting out the tastiest food... Which is (I don't know)... Under the water... So it is about swimming. Or hidden in a tree... So it is about bending a bit of wire to get the bugs to come out...' Something else. That's the point there.
It got me thinking about small groups. About how if you have something that is 'too freely accessible' (whatever that means) then it simply will become swamped by people who will kill it.
About how anything of value simply needs to be hidden away.
It feels to me like anything of value has been well and truly hidden away from me, these days. I'm having a rough patch... I suppose I'm catching the mood of here. This is the mood of here. Without mummy and daddy to take me away and out of it all... There really is no respite...
(I think things are coming together and will be alright it's just a turbulent time after a turbulent year. And I've been disappointed to find I've come to a half baked program that doesn't have teaching staff or course outlines and I really do feel like all but the first 1/3 of the last course I did was random... 'Easy pass' for the kids who did well in other papers... Reassessing knowledge from there...) That's why people say it's a hoop, of course. Jump the hoop and move on / get out. The university... Well... People have been complaining for years, now, that the university doesn't really reside their anymore.
The university used to be a place for... For Jonathan Livingston Seagull's. I thought that was the point. But it's not. It's just where we send our kids so they can get themselves in debt because we don't have jobs for them... Or it's where the government will pay to keep out kids if we invested in them for their earlier education...
I wonder how much money my Mother made from having me. I mean, all the money she was given by the government to raise me. All the money that she saved instead of spending on me (and she did). I wonder how much money she made. I think about how for most of my life I wished I'd never been born. The world is worse off for having me in it (in terms of the resources I've burned up). Except... For her. She's the one to have profiteered. No wonder this society doesn't think much of me. No wonder I don't think much of myself.
I'm exhausted from interacting with her about this motorbike thing... She always tries to guilt me, you see. Because I'm so readily / easily guilt tripped. If she keeps on with it then I might just ask her how much money she made from me. Whether she's disappointed in me that I didn't die an injurious death with a big payout like my brother did. Perhaps this sounds harsh... If she had ever shown just a tiny bit of warmth or good feeling or soothing or caring for me (or him) then I might have different feelings... But as things stand...
While humanity is so very much nicer in theory...
When it come to her in particular...
I don't.
(And guilt, again).
Things really do go so very much better when I don't interact with her.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1093210
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20160906/msgs/1093300.html