What passes for introspection

[sabotabby]

Ah, yes. So the evening's festivities went well. Buncha friends, some wine, some Guinness, some Jameson, and possibly some embarrassing videos on my digital camera (I haven't checked yet).

I was miserable yesterday primarily because 2006 was marked by life-altering events hitting me one after another. Probably my biggest contradiction is that, while I agitate for change in the world, I long for stability in my own life. The past year has been about the universe reminding me that I don't call the shots and that I'm not the kind of person who gets any kind of stability.

So, big, frightening changes and all that. I don't do resolutions, but if I did, it'd be to make more of the big frightening changes myself to mitigate the ones that I have no control over.

This puts a lot of things into perspective.

Comments

[andreazenith.livejournal.com]

I don't do resolutions, but if I did, it'd be to make more of the big frightening changes myself to mitigate the ones that I have no control over.

Sabotabby, you make me smile. =*^.^*= Glad to hear that you had a fabulous time last night!

Salude!
(and GLOMPS!)
Anj

[sabotabby]

*toasts and hugs*

[theoldanarchist.livejournal.com]

Probably my biggest contradiction is that, while I agitate for change in the world, I long for stability in my own life.

I know exactly what you mean. I'd like a lot more positive chaos (in the Hakim Bey sense of the word) in the world, and a little more creative stability in my own life. In order to make these creative guerrilla forays into the world, I need a safe harbour, a home base from which to operate. Is that too much to ask?

That "now serving molotov cocktails" line on your icon reminds me of a line in a poem I wrote 15 years ago: "Now I am drinking molotov cocktails in the alley with The Whore/and vomiting flames that burn the trash that is yesterday's bad-news-papers/and the bottles thrown out the windows/at noisey nightcats/who sing for their lovers/who ignore them". I later reworked the idea and the imagery for a radio-play I wrote. The idea I was going for---and I can't say I was completely successful, either---was of a character whose younger radical inclinations had turned inward, who now spent his life looking out his apartment window, becoming more and more disenchanted and misanthropic. He acts as the narrator, walking through a city and riding the streetcar (the city is based New Orleans), judging everyone he sees, and finding them somehow lacking. The idea was that he is now drinking his molotov cocktails rather than hurling them.

[sabotabby]

Oooh that sounds cool.

About the icon—my paid account expired, so I'm down to six icons for a bit—it's one of the first I made when I started up my LJ. I have a friend who works in catering and at the end of a long shift dealing with annoying yuppies, she's inclined to utter said phrase.

[theoldanarchist.livejournal.com]

That is a great story.

Here in the next couple days, I am going to make an icon of this picture I've got of some molotovs sitting on a windowsill. If memory serves, it is from Paris, May '68.

[eyelidlessness.livejournal.com]

Probably my biggest contradiction is that, while I agitate for change in the world, I long for stability in my own life.

I struggled with this for a long time, myself. I think I eventually decided that, to a certain degree, it's not really a terrible contradiction—or, at least, it depends on the circumstances surrounding the stability, how it's achieved, what sacrifices and compromises need to be made, et cetera. On the other hand, I think this realization helped me to be more comfortable with what stability I have and even more willing to risk it if I think it's worth it.

[sabotabby]

I think it's also a recognition of why change needs to happen. nostalgia_lj once did a post about the difference between socialists and capitalists or libertarians, and basically when the former see a pyramid-shaped socio-economic structure, they pretty much figure that they're going to be on the bottom, whereas the latter envision themselves as the lucky few who will take risks and win. She phrased it more eloquently than that, but a great motivator in striving for a more egalitarian world is an aversion to winding up in the shithouse.

[eyelidlessness.livejournal.com]

Well, you just need to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and work harder, obviously.

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant. And it prefectly describes my father-in-law, the very wealthy Libertarian, who got so rich all by himself, without any help from anyone.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I think part of what helps us deal with the external chaos is the reserves of whatever lets us know that we can cope. For some people that's a stable base, for others its a backlog of experience, for others its thriving on the chaos.

There's also the fact that when one agitates for change, one is generally agitating for specific changes; the universe is even less likely than the government to care about that. It's not as contradictory as it seems, in other words.

[sabotabby]

I don't think it's entirely contradictory. It's just very dramatic in my case.