=========================================================================== BBS: The Cutting Edge! Date: 04-07-95 (00:10) Number: 19 From: BLUE DEVIL Refer#: 310582 To: WIRED CHILD Recvd: NO Subj: What's the matter her Conf: (19) Nirvana --------------------------------------------------------------------------- WC³I could just go on and on in a terminal dialogue full of pithy quoted ³text and neat aphorisms. Fuck it. WC³Et tu crap aside, what made it such a powerful satire is that, like it ³or not, you *are* The Kid Most Likely To Succeed. I don't have to run ³down the list, you know it already. And just because you haven't Solved ³World Peace, Invented a New Vegetable and Cured Dysentery YET doesn't ³mean that you're a total washup. WC³A BBS post never cured someone's self-loathing (if it did, I'd probably ³walk around all day with a shit-eating grin on my face from all the ³unearned accolades); never the less, I scrawl these words simply because ³I feel I *have* to. I can't let the Silence swallow up another cry ³whole, as it so often does. WC³As for writing, before you are so envious of all my great "experiences ³and knowledges", be sure to count up how many books I've written, how ³many stories I've published. Thank you. I've tried to pull together ³memories of my past, and it comes together as disjointed snippets simply ³because my memory's so fucking burned out from acid I can't even ³remember half of the eighties. (I vaguely remember Duran Duran.) And ³what my clumsy self-medication didn't kill, the dark memories I was ³trying to kill finished off. So how do you write about THAT? There's ³only room for a few Hunter S. Thompsons. WC³So I write about the present? My great achievments of the past three ³years -- learning how to edit videotape, quitting a job, and making a ³few relationships last beyond the wC-benchmark 90 days. Wooh. I've been ³half tempted to just pack up a few clothes and a writing tablet and just ³hit the road... go LIVE something. Better that, perhaps, than ³suffocating in my comfort zone. WC³So instead I write occasional drabs of prose and dribble them onto a ³basically noncritical message base, and lately I can't even do that ³little bit. And the hell of it is, I *know* I have a voice that could ³write the Pivotal Work Of The Late Twentieth Century, and I'm too ³goddamned lazy to write it. WC³Reaching people -- what is the difference between reaching someone ³emotionally and dancing a fragile minuet of lies and deceit? Damned ³little, I've found. We all react according to a roadmap of patterned ³response, learned through etiquette and rote. Very few people actually ³utter a true feeling, because usually it's despair and fear and if you ³let the wolves know that they eat you. I fear what it must be like for a ³woman in today's society, where they're basically prey and predator, a ³schizoid mass of conflicting impulse. If you actually reach out to ³someone, really expose the vulnerable pulpy mass of your own feeling and ³insecurity, nine times out of ten you will be thrashed for your trouble. ³I have pictures. WC³So I try to communicate a little of the voice screaming within, since ³this is probably the safest place to do it, and the few who read these ³words are pretty familiar with my chosen psychoses in any event. And ³that's about all we can hope for. It's infinitely more communication, ³more *real* communication than you'll find almost anywhere. Here I don't ³have to be the snide survivor... occasionally I can actually let down a ³few metal slabs and cry soundless words. Which usually have little ³meaning besides the fact that it is possible to cry them. WC³Yet this is what can give hope -- that there are others who also see the ³same things you do, think in much the same way, and you realize that ³maybe there's actually a few shards of light at the end of the tunnel ³and not just the heat death of the universe. WC³There was a coherent post here somewhere, I'm quite sure. WC³I think probably the thing that shines in your emotional inventory, ³above the intellect and the creativity and the hope and the orange ³juice, is the fact that you *do* want to reach someone, that you ³actually get that platinum rush from reaching someone. Yes, it is better ³then sex. It's that small bit that assuages your conscience that when ³you die there'll be a little jot in your favor when the roll is called ³up yonder. And I think people have been reached. Good lord, it took me 6 ³hours of gut-wrenching angst to post my bowlderized life-story, and I'm ³probably the most consistently navel-gazing of the bunch. Now look at ³the collection of lives, all of which have a few salient points in ³common. Namely alienation and twisted promise, damaged hearts and fading ³hopes. Solidarity in misery? No, perhaps a sign that it's not as black ³as it seems, but merely unilluminated. Bit of a difference. WC³So what now? We pick ourselves up and go on. You move to Atlanta and ³begin Phase Insert Number Here. And don't kid yourself, it's a hell of ³a step tearing yourself away from all the things that have made you ³emotionally comfortable here. I don't think it'll pose much of a ³problem. After all, you're blessed with a quicker wit, a more active ³creativity, and spoo that sells for approximately the same price as ³Californium. WC³wC ³hadda end sometime --- þ SLMR 2.1 þ Snap rats!