Re: CHAT! Alien-ness (was Re: I'm new!)

On Sat, 21 Oct 2000, czHANg wrote:

> On Sun, 22 Oct 2000 10:32:45 +0930, :
> >
> >  > Well, as I'm sure you've discovered, it is inherently *difficult* to
> come
> >  > up with an alien, because we're all human here (...I think) and haven't
> >  > met any (...I think)!
>
>         :::swears everyone on the List to secrecy::
>         Ever since I was like 7, I have felt like I am co-inhabited by a space
> alien spirit. I really seem to get my best creative & hypercreative ideas
> from "my unnameable alien spirit."
>         Sometimes this spirit keeps me awake at night... & in many situations of
> mortal danger, helped me coldly prevail without panicking...
>         Without this alien spirit, I would not be who I am. I guess some would say
> this is my Guide Spirit.
O fortunate person.  I talk to God and occasionally to an imaginary
friend/alter ego.  Or to my boyfriend.  :-p

>         Same here. Kids in school were always calling me "weirdo"... I have gotten
> so good at being "Other" (guess having William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick,
> Dennis Hopper, James Woods, etc. & the mythological/folkloric influences of
> tricksters like Sun Wu K'ung and Coyote would do that...) I actually have
> for so long cultivated being nonconformist to the point that it's not an act
> any longer, that it really is me.
I was the school weirdo in HS, and people didn't mess with me mainly
because a) I had no compunctions about "tattling" (as demonstrated on the
one time I found out some messed-up kid was brutalizing my sister
emotionally) if I felt the authorities should no about something, and b)
I could outsmart them.  (The other smart kids?  They were my friends.  We
had a sort of nerd-circle.)  I got picked on a lot before HS but that was
because a) I was weird and b) I had messy emotional problems.  <Shrug>

I'm nonconformist in some ways, loner in others.  It has seemed to me for
a long time that "loner" should be added to the common categories of
"leader" and "follower."  When you get right down to it, I hate dealing
with people in realtime.  I always mess it up.  <wry look>

>         I tend to scare off people that are too "normal"... I upset their lil
> worldviews severely. Trendoid people tend to like me at first but then
> realize that they have gotten in way over their heads. Besides I like have a
> few select good friends rather than a wide circle of hanger-ons (having once
> been a heroin junkie, I realized one can count only on a handful of people
> to do you right _in extremis_... & sometimes that the least likely person
> may even risk their life for you just cuz you might have smiled at them when
> no one else would or shared what food you had with them).
<nod>  Absolutely.  I had a quasi-feud going one year with a
socialite/gossip who just couldn't make sense of me (nor I of her), but
when I was in the midst of a near suicide-attempt she stood by me.  I
have been forever humbled by that incident and I remember her with much
gratitude.

While I rarely get along in close contact with conventionally "normal"
people, I *have* learned much from them.  I have to stop myself from the
knee-jerk reaction of not taking "normal" people seriously (and often
resenting them, too), because it's a mistake I've made once too often.
Who am I to condemn, with what little knowledge I have, another path
taken?  :-)

YHL