self-creation

[jinian]

Wrote down last night something that I have often wondered and probably posted before: "Where is the line between wanting to be the kind of person who has such impulses and actually having them?" (The impulse in question was to read aloud some of the poetry in Possession so I could feel myself saying it. I did, of course.) I think that the promptness of the wish has something to do with it, and the willingness to carry it out as well. Half of me wants to go back and tell my child-self that I can train myself to be who I want to be and half of me is not sure it counts if done that way.

This morning I was standing at the stop waiting for the bus to turn the corner, and I started to describe a passer-by's hair to myself. Like butter, like creamy honeysuckle with a touch of orange, bright-shining ponytail on a dark-dressed boy.

And I want to be that kind of person too.

Comments

re: self-creation

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

why should it not count? i believe that a lot of what we are isn't innate, it has formed because of things that happened to us. if externally affected changes count, heck, intentional changes by the self should definitely count. :)

and btw, i love your descriptions, especially those of clouds.

Re: self-creation

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I don't really know, I've just never been comfortable with deliberately changing myself. When I was in high school I refused to even admit I might want to be different, much less change on purpose, so I'm evidently getting somewhere.

The clouds yesterday while going home from the second bookstore! I almost forgot! They were a comfortable flat blue like old house-paint, and then in front of them were two diaphanous golden blots and a banking airplane with the sun gleaming off it. The clouds were as fast as the plane, really flying along, making the other clouds look plodding; they kept their shapes regardless.

(I guess doing it more is a form of thank-you, isn't it? Thank you again.)

Re: self-creation

[eub.livejournal.com]

I saw that (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/images/yr2003/03/porch%20glowy.jpg)! Or a relative inbred most strictly. It was moving very fast, had almost ducked behind the deck by the time I got the camera aimed at it.

(Half an hour earlier, the bottom of the cloud layer, raked by the invisible sun, showed turbulent ripples with an odd pearly luster, like -- do you know those flat coffee-table toys, some with light and heavy dusts, or with water and sand, but the kind with a thick liquid like fish-scale emulsion? One of those.)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

"Self-creation is the highest art."

Compared to where I was ten years ago, the majority of who I am, and who I appear to have succeeded at being judging by other people's reactions to me, is who I decided I wanted to be, some for rational reasons, some for reasons of the heart, and some for Darwinian reasons which may or may not count as intentional.

IME, it definitely counts if done this way, though being sure you've arrived where you want to be is not easy.