Forceful Fungi

I expected Skyward (Brandon Sanderson) to be good, and it was recommended by @ViHart, but it still surprised me. It’s about the oppression of young people and the systems we build to allow it. To require it. It’s about how oppression hurts people on both sides of the line, albeit in different ways. It’s about the programming we use to create these differences and the way enforcement punishes non-compliance instead of promoting justice. It’s about the definition of humanity, of free will, and of cowardice. It’s about the pain and power of tradition. It’s got a central metaphor about geology and freedom and isolation (which fits both my Jemisin mood and my own recent writing). It’s about misidentifying empathy as a defect when it interferes with stratification, or when it requires actions contrary to The Rules.

It’s about a young woman who has worked to embody the ideals of this system, despite being punished for it since childhood, and to overcome every obstacle it created for her. She eventually finds that the obstacles were intended to preserve the status quo over ideals, and that her work would never pay off because the system only ever intended to consume her. It’s about grief, and all the ways we are asked not to feel it. It’s about the loss the world demands to keep itself running. It’s about secrets, and they way the hurt us all – those keeping them and those they’re kept from. And it’s about the work she does outside the system, for herself, and her willingness to be truly independent in the one way that her individualistic society most firmly forbids — by deciding that what she wants can’t come by defining herself in terms of what she is not, or what others imagine she should be. And so of course eventually she saves the world with the support network she reluctantly builds throughout her grief.

And there’s a sentient death robot who just wants to be a real boy (but already is) and study mushrooms (using his guns). You should read it. Or even just lie to me about reading it so I can pretend you know what I’m talking about in later references.

Watched an episode of Veep (HBO) where @JLD had a great dress [fig 1,2]. That show has a handle on narcissism that I really appreciate. It lets us see 20 different versions of it, and to laugh about some of the harms because its played in-group instead of at the innocent (mostly). It’s not as powerful or nuanced as the House of Cards (Netflix) exploration of narcs but it’s broader and more relentless and no less accurate. And it separates narcissism from ambition or greed or other prevalent co-factors — her ambition is a product of her narcissism, not the other way around. She’s not driven, she’s entitled, and she’s willing to hurt people who don’t just hand over whatever shiny thing catches her eye.

I’ve been thinking about the ways we protect ourselves. Or try to protect each other. The way isolation can feel like safety not just for ourselves but as a thing we should use to shield those that we love. And I know this feeling, that imagines keeping your hands and arms inside the vehicle will ensure that you are protected from the world around you. To look back at the safety bar in the next car and imagine that it holds those you care about close to you and away from danger. But all it really ensures is that you’ll be stuck on the track, unable to control where you end up ¹And subject to whatever definition of “safety” comes from unregulated thrill rides operated for profit by people who think branding is more important than maintenance and who pay minimum wage (or less – fucking entertainment industry) to the folks who are responsible for for the safety of hundreds of people each day., with everyone else dragged along with you. All isolation really guarantees is that you won’t have help when you need it.

It’s hard to admit we can’t protect people, or ourselves. To feel the despair of knowing they’ll be hurt. Are being hurt. To imagine you could stop even a little of it with the right sort of interference, or at least deflect it toward your own more callused responses. And sometimes we can, for a moment, in the right circumstance, hold back that pain. Sometimes we can push it out until it will be a little less overwhelming, providing some cover against threats we understand and are prepared to address.

But we can never stop it. Can never make it safe. The pain will find a way to seep in. Or the car will come off the tracks. Or you’ll discover it’s hurtling “safely” toward a destination even less tolerable and more inevitable than anything you hoped to protect against. There is no safety in isolation, in strapping yourself to a train you don’t control, in holding others above the flood as it washes you away.

Our hope, our only hope, is to help each other feel the pain. To embrace the fragility of our experience and fight and grieve through it together. To depend on each other to share the pain, and to allow our own to be shared. Obviously we should take care to minimize pain where we can, to avoid creating it unnecessarily, but not at the cost of isolation. Not at the cost of having the bear other pain alone.

It’s hard to feel safe depending on other people. Knowing that some of them will hurt you through malice or negligence or petty selfish desire. Knowing that the interactions among people will create new pain that you cannot always predict or protect against. Feeling the vulnerability and pressure of support that can falter on human frailty or overwhelm us in its collected power.

Which is why we must build a support network that is broad and varied enough to support us not just from the world but from each other, and from ourselves. To accept that we will be hurt and that our salvation is in recognition of that pain, in the expression and release of it, and in recovery. To see that durable protection comes not from a static shield that deflects all incursions, but in the strength of a dynamic response that can absorb them across many components, and reshape itself to adapt to individual need.

That’s a whole slew of mixed metaphor, a conflation of safety and individual agency against a claim of collective security, but I’m gonna let it stand. The Screed still doesn’t get rewrites and I do have something to say. But I might try to find it again. Because I know from experience that isolation is the danger, that avoiding risks doesn’t avoid harm, and that vulnerability is the ultimate source of all safety. And I want you to know too, so you can help me with mine. And so it’s easier for me to help you with yours.

Intense but unfocused is probably a good summary for the whole day and not just this episode. Work was fine; went to my morning meeting, got all my deadline items done, and found out I don’t move until next week so I don’t have to go in again this week to label things. I ate lunch and supper on my own without prompting. I got dressed like a human early in the day and got to wear my new #GreenMachine leggings all day. I didn’t get to sock animation; I think it would go better with Shanda’s help. Spent a lot of time reading, including some time on the RBN and CPTSD ²Where I found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/bb5wpc/ I always was told that breaking a bone would finally be “enough” to qualify for medical treatment or at least like home care or consideration. Which of course was a lie; nothing was ever enough to justify care for me. But my belief that it would be was based on her explicit … Continue reading boards.

Talked at DerbyK about the value of venting. Talked at M and mostly gave you a break from my recent nagging. I at least switched topics, though possibly to something equally distressing. Didn’t get my work laptop back on the domain, didn’t get my e-trade token fixed, didn’t book a dentist appointment. I did finally start drafting my report to Eggsy ³Which I want to disclaim was motivated in part by a desire to advance other plots on the same front, but motivations don’t matter and I shouldn’t judge myself harshly for doing a good thing for partly selfish reasons. Or so I’m told by my smart brain; my feels disagree.; I’ve had research done for a while but could never get it written up. Still no word on taxes or Medicaid or specific plans with C. I did get claims from my old therapist sorted out finally. And I should ask Shanda what’s up with Dog’s insurance claims, as it’s been a while on those.

Talked with Shanda about your drug use. It would be great if we could stop having this conversation in such a defensive context. I’m not trying to make you do or not do anything, I’m just trying to help with a thing you’ve told me you want — to be more deliberate about it. But we’re still sort of at you not wanting to decide sometimes, or to decide based only on the basis of escapism, and I don’t think that’s what you want to have happen. I don’t feel like there’s an acute issue with any particular outcome, but I do think you’d like to be in more affirmative control instead of just letting it happen. It would be great if you could find framing for yourself that lets you discuss the issue more productively, and maybe at times other than the moment before you participate (which is often the moment after you’ve already decided to do so).

Who knows how I felt physically today. Well enough to get up early and dressed before late, though part of being up was feeling disturbed about sleep in the morning from other household activity. Well enough to walk Dog without prompting or any notable concerns or limitations, though I didn’t undertake an hill climbs. Well enough to eat two normal(ish) meals. It’s possible my lack of focus was body-related, but I can’t say after the fact. And my lack of focus did make it hard to do a few things – would have made work hard if I planned to do much today. I haven’t done enough tracking lately but I’ll try to get back on that.

ZiB

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