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Tuesday, April 11, 2006 15:11
Goodbye, farewell, auf wiedersehen adieu I joined an email list called Britpoly a couple of years ago — I think — on a contract. I'd been a member of the UK Heathens group (also on Yaboo) for a while. My purpose on those lists was, as usual, to disseminate information to certain members who needed exposure to that information at that particular time.Also as usual, this meant getting involved in a discussion on what it is to be a Gimp. It's just one of those things: either you grok it or you don't. If you don't grok it you are likely to go one of two ways: you believe the term applies to you, incorrectly. Or you think it's the worst possible thing to be and you cannot understand how anyone would allow that to happen or tolerate it. At the most extreme end of the scale it is possible that a Gimp will be dismissed outright as a nutter because the anthropocentric dogma of Neo Paganism has no room for the concept of God sluts and Gundogs. If you do grok it it is likely that you are already a Gimp and don't need it explaining. It was on that particular contract that I 'met' Ertla. Ertla is still the only person I have ever met who was apparently tagged as a Gimp and refused to play ball. She refused to accept the training, because she found it intolerable, and rejected the influence of the Peanut Gallery — successfully, at least partially. Not that she seems to have found any great happiness in her success. We've exchanged a few emails. I kept them all — Word to the wise: I keep emails. If you email me something that is not spam then it will not be deleted. I also have a very good memory for conversations. I have a very good memory. Anything you say to me can and will be recorded and will likely be brought back at a later date in the course of discussion — and when I realised that Ertla was the same person I had spoken to when I was working out the Britpoly ticket I went back and read them again. Since getting busy on LJ again I've been reading her journal. She has been on my friends (a markedly inappropriate term) list. I've watched her going over and over the same ground, treading in her own footprints and not getting anywhere. She does not seem to me to have moved on at all from the situation of ten years ago that she described to me in one of the aforementioned emails. I have just had to remove Ertla from my friends list because reading her material is too painfully frustrating. Have you ever watched someone doing something and making a dog's ear of it, and felt that deep, itchy, burning, twitchy sensation to jump in with an "I'll do it!" but had to clamp down on it so as not to cause offence? I've been feeling like that. Only, obviously, it's not something I can do for her, and it's not so much that she's making a dog's ear of it as going round and round and round in circles like, as I observed, a beetle tied to a nail. Ertla is one of those who does not grok it. The process of becoming a valued Gimp is not an easy one — more on that later. It really isn't. I've been psychologically and physically abused. I've been tortured: again, physically and mentally. I've lost a good few years of my life to physical and mental illness. My career has suffered. My annual salary now is much less than it probably would have been had I not had to take time out to deal with the weird shit. But, at the end of it, for me the process was worth it. I have an amazing amount of self-confidence. When, in an argument last year, I was accused of having an ego so large it would block out the sun, my initial thought was only: "Of course. It has to be that big because I'm so great." I do not have self-esteem issues. I am fundamentally happy with who and what I am, and the desires I have in life are for the temporary, intransient things that we can do without. I love being me, and that is the greatest gift that a person can have, in my opinion. I will continue to love being me no matter what happens in my life. I wouldn't ever want to be anyone else. That's a Gimp thing. Gimps are fundamentally happy with their lot. We like being this way. It might be painful at times, and difficult, and challenging, and sometimes it hurts so much I might want to cry. I might lose friends. I might have a screwed-up sense of time and a pathological personality profile - but this doesn't stop me being a fully-functioning member of society who is basically happy and who feels loved and valued and cherished. The four main men in my life are tricksters every one. But I know they love me. I know they dote on me in a way that favourite Uncles and Grandparents dote on the children of their family. Coyote isn't just my Uncle, he's my godfather. I bear their marks. I am branded with the designations of their ownership. I have given of myself to them utterly and completely, and my lack of choice in the matter is not relevant. Only a fellow Gimp can understand that. I don't like those limits, and "spiritual" people seem, disproportionately unwilling to accept that I might have and express such limits, or prehaps that I might be angry and distressed about having them. But no amount of fantasy makes limits go away, whatever is claimed in various "spiritual" practices, that usually amount to believing in spite of evidence, things that, it is claimed, thereby become "true". You know, it's not about failing to recognise limits or being unwilling to accept that a person might express them. It's more about observing that one does not have to be defined by those limits. I could stick myself in a box labelled 'lupus-sufferer' and stay indoors all summer. I could stay in bed every time I wake up feeling lethargic, because that's what the books tell you to do. As a person with certain difficulties understanding social norms I could find a job that involves being locked away by myself in a cupboard all day without having to talk to anyone. Or I could carry on putting myself in positions that are difficult and challenging and concentrating on the little things I am improving rather than the big things that I am still stuck on. Because the little things will eventually add up into big things. That's another thing that comes from the Gimp self-confidence. They say jump, we don't even ask how high. We just keep jumping, getting better at it all the time. The beetle tied to a string goes round and round and round the nail, winding tighter and getting more limited each time. Say what you like about Gimps — we may not be immune to repeating ourselves, but we make progress every time. (0) comments links to this post
Monday, April 10, 2006 15:39
No wonder I feel tired in the morningsBeen having some odd dreams of late.Then again, when do I ever have dreams that aren't odd? From a week ago there was a dream in which I had been convicted of some crime or the other and was sent to prison (again). It was the strangest damn prison. Ending up in prison after I fuck up or someone else fucks up or just being caught out is not exactly an uncommon occurrence, and it's where the whole Family principle of only using their people Elsewhere comes into its own (and, yes, I have met folks from Elsewhere sent Here on a job for exactly the same reasons that we get sent Elsewhere, only for them obviously, Here is Elsewhere) — it's not like we need to worry too much about spending the rest of our lives behind bars when it's just a matter of waiting awhile until the next evac opportunity. So, anyway, prison isn't unfamiliar to me. But most prisons do not consist of a three-level habitat in which one floor only is above ground level, and the decor is like the inside of the Why Don't You? house, and it's populated by a gang of unruly teenagers. And most prisons aren't run by a Patrick Stewart looky-likey doing a passable turn as Charles Xavier with amnesia. I tried to get out at one point, using a £2·50 coin — these do not exist in the Here and Now. This would have enabled me to jemmy the door somehow (don't ask me how I knew how to do it) but Chucky-boy, while not the full-blown planetary mind-bender of Professor Xavier, was enough of a mingle-mangler to spot me and put an end to that. I remember talking to him at one point, calling him Charles, calling up all sorts of images and mental threads about Xavier, and the way he responded to me as if, while that was not him, he knew it could have been, or was in another time and place and if he reached out in the right way he could touch that other him and have access to the same sort of powers and abilities that he had. Last night there were a couple of doozies. In the first dream Munky turned up because he'd got a job on the IT staff for my new employers. I remember being angry with him and losing my rag a bit — I asked him whether it would ever be possible for me to do anything without him tagging along like a sad puppydog, and whether it was possible for him to go do something that he'd thought of for himself for a change. Then there was a bit when I went to this scrappy's and I asked him to let me in to look at his site. He was a bit dubious and I was worried that he was going to get nasty and violent. I pointed out that I didn't have a warrant card yet so I couldn't do anything and nothing would happen to him as a result of what I saw. It was just that I was new and I was trying to get familiar with sites like his and I'd be really grateful if he'd let me in. And he said yes, which came as something of a shock because this guy had quite a reputation, and I thought that if I had been a full officer and had a warrant then he probably wouldn't have let me in at all. The place was enormous. From his office it was like the army surplus in Crediton, at first — big spaces, with tiny stairways going to more big spaces with lots of junk inside. Then I went further into the building and there were greenhouses and vast quantities of hash plants all in bud, some of them hanging up to dry from the ceiling. Loads of them, so many I could hardly move for them. There were other people there too, all of whom seemed mellow and who nodded at me as if to say "How's it hangin'?" I was sure I was going to get lost. Maybe I did get lost. There was something about a bath after that, in a spa, which I think I found because I got lost in the scrappy's place and wound up there. After that I had a dream in which I took part in an extreme mountain bike race. I'm not much of a mountain biker. I'm more of a roadie. And this was a big event — it was hard. It was for real MTB lunatics. There was one section where we were flying over this immense mudflat that is about 150 feet above a river valley, and it starts off not too bad. A woman comes speeding past me and advises me to keep my weight back so that the front wheel doesn't dig in, and this seems to work. It was a bit like ski-ing in powder. But then the mudflat develops a camber, and suddenly I'm slipping down the shoulder of this slope and there's nothing I can do about it. The short-haired, fit-looking (you know that almost gaunt look of hardened athletes) blonde woman is shooting away from me at a great rate of knots, still on the high path, somehow maintaining her grip. I slide down and I'm a bit scared at first but it seems okay. It's a long drop, and the bottom part of the slope is covered in river-washed, wet and slippery cobbles. Then it's into the river. The river leads into a cave complex and, looking up, I can see that the higher path also leads into a cave complex, so I assume that it's the same one, I'm just at a lower point. I can see a couple of riders, bikes shouldered, running ahead of me and I follow. Then the lights go out. It's pitch black. We've just missed the checkpoint by about ten seconds and they've shut the course down in the sections now officially classed as not part of the race band. Those of us who didn't make it are left fumbling around in the dark. I was a DNF. First time ever. I was furious. The course directions had been crap, there was no route information or signage en route — unless you were not only good but had done the course before and knew it, you didn't stand a chance. The DNFs were tucked away at the top of the hotel at the finish, once they finally made it back, given a roll with some chocolate spread and a coffee and then ignored while those who made the finish within time are feted in a huge hall with champagne and lobster and posh food and drink. There was one nice young black guy, one of the finishers, who went past on his way to the bathroom and was evidently as appalled by the way we were being treated as we were. I finally lost my temper and beat the crap out of one of the race organisers, telling him that it was a really poor way to encourage people into the sport if this was the way they were treated, and it wasn't really an event at all but just a day out for the extreme sports cronies and the clique of those who had done it before, and if that was the way they wanted it then they shouldn't have anyone else take part in the first place. I was a tad miffed. (0) comments links to this post
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