(no subject)

[tylik]

silenceleigh's character interview, by way of meowse.


1. What do you look like, and how old are you?

I am thirty two (just). I'm not really sure what I look like. I am 5' 11", broad shouldered, muscular, busty, thicker through my middle than I'd like, but I'm pretty active and I hope I look it. I suspect words like "robust" come to mind. Long dark hair, silvering a bit at the temples, prominent eyebrows, increasingly prominent cheekbones as I get older... *shrug* I tend to think I look like a German farmwife, but I've been accused of many things. If I were a creature from Tolkien, it'd probably be a Beorning. Heh. Or a Beorning-Numenorian crossbreed. That's about right. (I'm not sure which of my parents would have been kinkier in that crossing...)

2. Do you have any pieces of clothing or jewelry that you love? What do those look like?

Once upon a time, and now I have renounced such things. Actually, I meant that satirically, but it's truer than I'd like to think. I used to buy beautiful handwoven wearable art and such. I used to wear unusual jewelry (I have a collection of bronze pieces by a particular french artist, for instance). Now I almost never wear jewelry, and most of my clothing is practical, easy to move in, and a disproportionate amount is made of wicking fabrics. I don't buy clothing I can't do martial arts in -- though I do like things that are a little clingy. I own two party dresses, both of which I like primarily because they don't get in my way. None of this means I'm not vain.

(I suspect that if my body settles down on a particular shape I'll pick up the occaisional nice thing.)

Oh, and I'm really very fond of my new taiji silks.

3. What are your friends like? What sort of society do you travel in?

Bright, well read, articulate, generally. A heavy preponderance of freaks and geeks. I tend to deal best with people who are pretty rational or intellectual, but have an intuitive or spiritual side as well. But I generally think people are interesting.

4. What was life like for you growing up?

Lots of contradictions. I fit in very poorly with most other children my age... but had a few friends I was raised with who generally could deal with me. My parents exposed me to a wonderful intellectual environment, and yet were pretty immature personally, and not really people I could rely on. Which not only taught me to be responsble, but also taught me that I could change the world around me. When I was a kid we were poor leftist hippies on Capitol Hill, and yet gradually trended towards some kind of upper middle class privledge. I was close to my half Japanese cousins. I was a good student, when I wasn't being a terrible little hacker and hiding shuriken in my shoes. I went to college when I was thirteen... and then dropped out.

5. If your current life more or less burned down and you could keep only one thing or person, what or who would it be?

When meowse answered this question, he answered it about saving things. And I too would be caught between impossible choices.

But for keeping things? Some of the hardest things I've done have involved walking away from people and things that I cared about. And yet... while they were not comfortable experiences, nor did they give me comfortable knowledge, they were true ones, and made me surer in being myself. I learned that I could walk away from all of it -- in my head the image is almost like walking through an illusiary wall of flame. It is terrifying, and it painful... but then you go through it, and you're still you, and not even really damaged, except by the knowledge of what you've done. And maybe that's not damage, maybe it's the opposite.

So if we're just talking about me losing them, but them going on well on their own... maybe it would be better just to lose it all. Or to keep some silly little thing, a stone, or a feather as a token. And I'm not sure I wouldn't go give it to the sea, even then. Sometimes I am quite enamoured of the idea of giving it all up.

6. Is there anyone who hates you? Do they have good reason? (Note: most characters will lie about that second question, but their lies are often enlightening.)

I really don't know. I think I need to answer this question a couple of different ways.

I don't know if I hate anyone. There are a few people I strongly dislike, or think poorly of. But I don't know if I could hate anyone I hadn't loved first, and at least at present I don't think there's anyone who I have loved and now hate. I'm not sure that that's the best way to define hate, but there are a few people who might feel that way about me. Of the three who come to mind -- and while I know these are people who feel strongly about me, I really can't describe what form those feelings take -- in two cases I think it is because I have come to represent for them pieces of themselves or their pasts they do not like. Or a fear of public shaming. But I could be completely wrong. In one case -- the one I really feel I know the least about -- I think it is because they wanted me to be something that I was not. I have some sympathy for the first two, but not much for the third. All three are people who really meant a lot to me at one time. One of them still does, kind of.

Hmm. There are also people who seem to have placed me in some sort of archtypal role in their lives. I'm not sure what that is all about, though I seem to be prone to it. Some of these people seem to care very strongly about my opinion of them, or to have given some version of me that is internal to them a role of great importance. I'd be kind of surprised if they didn't hate me, at least from time to time. It's always really weird when I run across that.

And then... Once upon a time I had talked to the manager of a particular group about a job, and he liked me, and I liked him, and it looked good... and then later he told me that when he talked to the leads that worked for him and mentioned bringing me on one of them said that if I was hired, he would quit the team. After a bit of nosing about, I figured out who this must have been (being the only person in his team I'd had anything to do with)... and could barely remember him, much less what I did to make such an impression. (I have a theory, involving a project we were both on, and him perhaps taking actions I took -- which to my mind were necessary for the project to continue -- very personally. But maybe not.) Maybe there are more people like that out there. Maybe there are a lot. I don't know.

7. Are you religious? What form does your religion take?

Er. I believe that spirituality is an intensely personal pursuit, and that while one can be inspired by others, it's the one area where anarchy is almost required. The only answers that count are the ones you find for yourself. This isn't "anything goes". It can be damned uncompromising, if you aren't willing to cheat yourself.

Complementarily, I believe that the universe is bigger than I, and more than I can encompass. I cannot Know it. Even though trying to understand it is one of the few things that seems innately valuable to me. I think trying to pretend I know more about it than I can is not only silly and useless, it's disrespectful.

I really enjoy other people's religions -- I think religions are, at their best, one of the more profoundly creative and beautiful works of humankind. And yet, when people start getting insistant about them, it's hard for it not to seem a trifle disrespectful to the universe, to me. I don't only believe I don't know, I believe you don't either. (Though I'd like to hear about your approximations -- hey, they might be better than mine.)

8. What are you attached to? Does it bring you joy, sorrow, or both?

Oy. Ideally I love a lot, and care a lot, and try to engage with the world, but I try to accept it on it's own terms, which means not being attached to my preconceptions or illusions about it. Ideally.

Moving target. Work in progress. Something like that.

Internally, I am attached to being able. There's flexibility there, and yet, lose enough of that, and life isn't worth living. There isn't anything big enough to fill that hole for me, I think.

With regard to people... If I'm going to be around people at all, I need engagement, and intellectual stimulation. Sadly, I have some of the weird identity bits that are, I am told, classic gifted child problems. I need to have people around me who can challenge me, and I really enjoy running into obstacles because they let me know where I am. When I go to places where people can't follow me, it's disorienting. And I get a little psycho about things that people see in me that I don't see in myself. There's something about attachment in that.

9. What do you think of people who don't follow your moral or ethical code?

Has there been more than one person in my life I ever would have thought of expecting to follow my ethical code? Even understand my ethical code? I mostly think people are like that. And in my code there are a lot of artifacts of my somewhat skewed upbringing and somewhat skewed personality. Much of it I expect really shouldn't apply to anyone else. In fact, if I meet someone who understands it too easily, I almost fear for their mental health. (Um. I'm serious about that. I think I've found a pretty good balance, most of the time, but it wasn't easy, and the people I've met who were close to me on this are generally pretty messed up. It seems likely that I too am messed up. I mostly don't feel messed up, though.)

Okay, I guess I should make a distinction between my internal applies only to me code, and the more general use version. (Which is sparse and flexible, but I do feel strongly about.)

People who don't follow that? I guess I'm pretty arrogant. I mostly think they're immature, or shortsighted. Or maybe they don't understand. (Or maybe I don't understand the situation well enough to judge what ethics apply.) It does depend on what ways in which they don't follow it. There are a number of things I think are erroneous, but somewhat excusable, and perhaps even the natural outgrowth of certain epistemological models. Which I believe are worthwhile, on their artistic merits, anyway. But usually kind of inefficient. Sometimes I wonder if I have chosen efficiency over beauty badly, though.

10. What is your definition of evil? Good?

Ick. I don't like either term, really. I'm a lot more comfortable with Good, though. Because there are many things that are clearly good. And there are things that to various degrees seem to lack being good, but evil seems like something else again.

I am very distrustful of stagnation, though. And as a result, I feel like I must embrace at least the possibility of change, even when change is scary.

11. What have you given up to become who you are?

A lot of the more recent ones seem to be world views I have shared with other people. Comfortable places to be, and comfortable habits of thought. Sometimes it feels like I have to chose between being part of a group, having a people, and being most fully me. I've tended rather towards the latter. Sometimes I've had to give up... well, if not myself doubts (I mean, they're still here, I know exactly where I left them) then the power I had given those self doubts over me.

This all is in such positive terms, isn't it? But it isn't always. Every time you step outside of your own community, you gain a little more perspective, a little more leverage. But you never can go home the same way again.

And I've had to give up things like a belief that if I just worked at something with enough will, I could do anything. Mmm. There's still a lot there, and I haven't tested all the outter bounds, but I've become intimately acquainted with the ways in which my body can fail me, and some of the more mundane limitations. Perversely, I kind of like them.