9:48 a.m. - 2003-06-20
"it's been a while... "
been wanting to write lately but just haven't made the time to do so in the mornings when my thoughts are the clearest. more than likely this entry too will be cut short but it's worth an attempt i suppose...
i've had a lot of interesting conversations lately. some with myself, most with other people.
i've determined that my obsession with people runs deeper than i had really thought. i love people. i love being around people with a lot of energy.
at the same time, your typical generic crowd of folks freaks me the hell out. there's nothing worse than waiting for a bus and all of a sudden find yourself being pressed forward, the woman behind you breathing down your neck and somehow, not matter how illogical it is to me, thinking that by snuggling up close to me, she's that much closer to getting on the damn bus. people... get a grip! in that situation, i threw a tizzy... i'm claustrophobic, when i'm in a crowd of people who carry mixed energy i get fidgety and even paranoid, not in the least comfortable.
it's so different if it had been a group of people like those at camp or at many of the other events (BR excluded here for some strange reason my brain has yet to fully process)... the energy is just different.
i don't know what it is exactly but the average person, especially up here in our lovely, uber-"friendly" (hahaha) Boston, just carries a raw energy that i can only liken to rubbing your hand across shards of glass. 90% of the time people are on edge, distant, and often of negative moods or seemingly so so that they can avoid any contact with the world around them. such an interesting thought to me that people can spend a majority of their lives in this type of space.
i will admit that i myself go there sometimes... especially in the city. i think it becomes a game of mimic or perhaps it's just the new englander in me but i'm also the first to spring into action if someone seems to genuinely need my assistance in something like directions... at that point, i try my best... even though i'm not the one to be asking about for directions in Boston really... though i'm getting better. relatively speaking it's usually easy to spot these types of people who genuinely need help... they often stick out like sore thumbs amid the sea of plaster faces passing by.
my obsession with people goes beyond just being surrounded by good energy... i like to know their brains. get a peek into what makes people tick. how people think. what provides people with their moments of happiness. why those things give that to a person. it's interesting to poll the mental landscape sometimes and find that amid a group of people who tightly share common interests you can find the valleys and peaks and hidden places in people's minds that would make for an interesting atlas.
it's something that, even as i write, i explore further in my head. the thoughts often go by so quickly that my fingers stop and before i can capture everything... it's all gone again and i'm off on a different aspect of the whole thing. people are one of the greatest mysteries in my opinion because we're all so different.
maybe i should have been an anthropologist...
onto something different...
our friend Grant. Grant called camp during the registration period and talked to the admins. he wanted to write an article on his experiences at camp. the admins said no since it's explicitly against the rules of camp and general guidelines for the event. NO media.
Grant, having been shot down by using the direct method, rallied his publication to provide him the fee for attending and registered as a camper. Grant signed a waiver that included a clause that stated that reporters were prohibited. Grant was fortunate enough to be the recipient of someone's kindness and got a ride to camp. he spent time with people who were kind to him, tried to include him, scened with some...
and then Grant disappeared.
last week a series of "Letters from Leather Camp" pops up at www.nerve.com. the community page for camp flared up to volumes greater than before camp even started. people were angry. people were vindictive. people were upset. people wanted to flame Grant... some nearly did.
here's my initial swing on it. i read the first two when they came to my attention... that was all that was out at that time. i didn't see how, besides the HUGE violation in trust and respect he displayed for the community, the event and the people he was involved with, his articles did anything other than display his emotions, reactions and comments on what he was seeing and hearing. even at this point it was blatantly obviously that he, a vanilla boy, had come to a new and most different world than he was used to.
i completely understand why people were angry. it was indeed a blatant violation of people's feelings and their privacy. he took advantage of the kindness of some people and that in and of itself was the cause of most of the horror and uproar. i do not in any way approve of how he went about getting his material for his articles but at the same time, there was no way to stop him from doing so since his real information was never known to the admins so they couldn't block him from coming.
i found all five of the articles interesting and the last the most interesting. i looked at them as the reactions to someone who had been thrust into the lifestyle without really knowing what exactly it's about. he's a 20-something and has all the "charm" of his typical age group by taking cheap shots at older generations and people who are heavy. he misconstrues details of the things he sees in his "horror" about what he's seeing.
in the series though i was able to watch his mind work because his series wasn't meant to be objective... it was very subjective, it was about someone having a "summer camp" experience he never had as a child. his iteration from cocky to feeling like an outsider was pretty much expected from my point of view. he threw up little flags along the way.
it was a good read though. go look for them. he's changed all the names and details about when and where camp was, changed the people's names that he dealt with (though some were close enough for me to figure out having been there).
it is, at the same time, a violation of community trust and a welcome look into the realizations of a mostly vanilla person in a alien environment.
people get way out of control sometimes though with these issues. they often forget that we too are often persecuted for the things we do in just the same way that we are basically prosecuting Grant. Grant wasn't writing an expose... if he were, i'd be a million times more upset about it i suppose. though, it would be too late to do anything about it other than whine, kick and scream, so instead i'd probably just be thinking about how to mitigate the consequences of such an act. people just don't seem to think that way though.
i don't even know if that whole section made any sense to anyone but me. i've spent so much time thinking about it and discussing it with other people that i'm not completely sure that the entirety of my thoughts are coming out on the matter. likely not.
left turn... part 3.
i'm feeling better. i've been sick since the day we got home from camp. that blows. and i was pretty good and sick... i can't even really tell you. but now, i'm reduced to a lesser cough, a slightly runny nose but at least i have my voice which was munchkin-ish monday and tuesday.
ahh well... it's 10:30 and i should probably start looking at doing some work. i've brain dumped a little so at least i've at least gotten my fix for writing. we'll see if anything else needs to fall out of my head later.
