tag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-30:1957066Asakiyume mitaasakiyumeasakiyume2023-11-13T19:12:12Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-30:1957066:1028653The Sleeping Soldier2023-11-13T19:12:12Z2023-11-13T19:12:12Zpublic10I've been daunted by the idea of trying to do justice to Aster Glenn Gray's <i>The Sleeping Soldier</i> here on Dreamwidth. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5974024746"><b>Somehow I did manage, finally, to say a few things on Goodreads,</b></a> but when I think about writing a DW post, I think about saying more, or making it more personal, or something. And then I wilt. And that's a shame, because I love this book. All of AGG's books are fun, thoughtful tales, but this one really nails a central theme of hers, which is what friendship means or has meant for people at different points in time, and what romantic love means, and what sexual attraction is and how that fits in.<br /><br />The scenario is that Russell, a young Civil War soldier, was cursed, Sleeping Beauty style, by a fairy, and has now awakened 100 years in his future, in 1965, where he's guided through his new life by Caleb, a miserably closeted gay college student. The story has plenty of the fun you'd expect from that setup, as Russell encounters the wonders of life in 1965--and also enlightens the college crowd about which things were, in fact, present in 1865 ("I <i>know</i> what ketchup is," he says haughtily at one point). But it also probes the grief and loss that would go with waking up 100 years in the future, and touches on how we understand history--or don't:<br /><blockquote>Caleb nodded. "It's hard for people to let go of their preconceived notions [about the past]."<br /><br />"They don't really want my opinion on anything," Russell griped. "They just want to draft the whole nineteenth century into supporting what <i>they</i> think. As if we all agreed with each other! We had this whole Civil War, you might could remember."</blockquote><br />And then there's that theme of friendship and romantic love, and what's appropriate to express and what's considered by society to be deviant at any given time. I knew some of this, but not much, and very little about how same-sex attraction has been understood. In fact, what little I know is mainly thanks to AGG's earlier stories. I'm humbled to say that her writing in this book made me understand the situation of a gay friend of mine (Caleb's contemporary) in new ways. On that note, I really love the character Michael in this story. What a good and patient friend.<br /><br />I came across this in someone's Goodreads review of the book:<br /><blockquote>I felt sad because I honestly never knew how it was in the past (men being open with their affection to each other).</blockquote><br />And this, from an Amazon reviewer: <br /><blockquote>I came out in my teens, in the Midwest in the mid-70s, and the novel captures that sense of isolation and self-discovery: reading The Charioteer, Giovanni’s Room etc. anything with gay characters while feeling like you’re the only gay person in the world and trying to figure out how you’ll make a life. I never would have expected this book to capture the profundity and comedy of this forgotten world so well.</blockquote><br />Those comments say so eloquently what's important and special about this book.<br /><br />... But past-meets-nearer-past moments were also great, honestly. I enjoyed the explanations of things like hot dogs ("Hot dogs are... um. A kind of sausage") and Russell's encounters with items such as escalators a whole lot too.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=asakiyume&ditemid=1028653" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-30:1957066:1003023Best friend?2022-10-12T19:50:35Z2022-10-12T19:50:35Zpublic47I started to post this as a tweet and then thought, <i>This is ridiculous; there are too many aspects to the question and too many long potential answers</i>. So I'm putting it here!<br /><br />When you were little, did you have best friends? Did you have several at the same time, or only one at a time? Or did you not use that term? <br /><br />If you did use it, do you continue to now? If not, what changed, do you think? If you're someone with one or more life partners, how does having that person or people figure into the equation, if at all?<br /><br />This question arose for me because I'm taking another online language class (Indonesian this time), and the teacher had us practice descriptions by asking us to describe our best friend, and I realized I had very dear friends but no one person I'd identify as a best friend.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=asakiyume&ditemid=1003023" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-30:1957066:964287not a checklist2021-04-02T12:30:19Z2022-02-06T00:53:03Zpublic58I was just realizing that two of my friends here on Dreamwidth are building little miniature scenes. "Huh," I thought to myself. "That's an interesting coincidence." [the joke will be on me as it turns out that ALL my friends on Dreamwidth are building little miniature scenes]<br /><br />Then I thought, "Wow, come to think of it, they also both can tell horrifying and yet entertaining stories of their childhood--that's something else they have in common. And they both enjoy gardening. And they're both writers. Well, everybody on Dreamwidth is a writer, so maybe that one doesn't count. Hmmmm, let's see ... they also both have some Jewish heritage, both love California, though only one lives there currently ...."<br /><br />There are differences between them too, of course. One's about, I don't know, twenty years older than the other? One's been married a couple of times and has kids; the other hasn't and doesn't. They have diverging levels of social-justice orientation and cynicism.<br /><br />So would these two people enjoy each other? Putting aside the fact that enjoying someone in person and online are two different things (with overlap, but not 100 percent overlap), lists of characteristics only represent a possibility for mutual interest and enjoyment--that's it. They're like tinder for a fire; they're not the spark. And the cool, wonderful, unpindownable thing about the spark is that when it's present, it can take hold in the most unexpected, damp, noncombustible pile of stuff. <br /><br />It's why you can write in your profile "I like unicorns," but you meet that other person who also likes unicorns, and you see just how incorrectly, unappealingly, and in fact downright maddeningly someone can like unicorns. "I like unicorns--but not like that," you think. Or, someone says, "I love watching high school basketball games," and (if you're me) you think, "Uhhhh, not me, not so much"--you say that (again, if you're me) without even ever having watched one, based just on your miserable years of gym class as a child and your lack of interest in sports, generally. But then, for whatever reason, you decide to give it a try, and this other person's enthusiasm gets you to see what's fun about them, and you end up enjoying yourself, and before you know it, you *do* love watching high school basketball games (.... not me; but it *could* be me--I'm just waiting for that invitation from the right person <small>and for the pandemic to be over</small>)<br /><br />It's also why I don't like checklists of characteristics or elements in books. Maybe having that element is necessary for you (though speaking personally, I don't think I have those, though I do have elements I want to avoid), but they won't be sufficient.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=asakiyume&ditemid=964287" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-30:1957066:952247friendship rock2020-10-26T14:21:27Z2022-02-06T00:52:57ZThe Cat Empire: Brighter Than Goldpublic16All neighborhoods have these little landmarks. This broad, flat rock at the edge of mine has become very popular during pandemic times:<br /><br /><img src="https://asakiyume.dreamwidth.org/file/456150.jpg" alt="" title="friendship rock" /><br /><br />I see couples sitting here all the time. There's a woman who comes with a blind man; sometimes women-who-walk-for-exercise sit and chat here. Yesterday it was these girls, who said they didn't mind if I posted their picture--so I am!<br /><br /><img src="https://asakiyume.dreamwidth.org/file/456412.jpg" alt="" title="with friends" /><br /><br />Bless you, friendship rock.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=asakiyume&ditemid=952247" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-30:1957066:856375shy like a pigeon2017-07-14T15:03:45Z2022-02-06T00:52:05Zpublic23Eve Shi introduce me to this great phrase, <a href="https://twitter.com/eve_shi/status/884392090141982720">shy like a pigeon</a>. It means someone who seems gregarious, but flies off if you get too close. I really understand that! I can be really sociable so long as there's a certain distance built in, like with .... drumroll .... social media!<sup>1</sup> Specifically, the sort of interaction that you can get on LJ/DW. You can share all sorts of thoughts, chat, enthuse about whatever it is you want to enthuse about, even give or receive comfort and consolation--but you can also retreat, and by and large people won't mind too much. It reminds me of something <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://sovay.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://sovay.dreamwidth.org/'><b>sovay</b></a></span> said about a writer's characterization, that his characters were <a href="http://sovay.dreamwidth.org/879891.html">"on the whole are drawn more vividly than deeply."</a> It's that type of friendship, vivid but not deep.<br /><br />Of course you can *make* it deep. I bet anyone who's been online for more than a few years has had serious, lasting friendships blossom from their online interactions. I know several people who've gotten married to people they met online. But when it gets deep, most probably you're no longer interacting solely through LJ/DW. Probably you're meeting up in person, sending private messages or emails, maybe exchanging paper letters, maybe phoning--you're getting to know the person through more than one medium.<br /><br />But once a friendship is a deep one, you can't convert it back into a shallow one. You can drift apart as friends--that happens--but you'll never not have shared a deep friendship. And if you have a social-media space made up of people who are mainly close friends, that's very different from a social-media space made up of strangers and acquaintances. Speaking for myself (but I'm willing to bet this is true for many people), it changes how you interact. You have responsibilities in a way you don't if you're interacting with strangers and acquaintances. <br /><br />Musing on the nature of online interactions and in-the-flesh interactions, and what friendship is, etc. etc., has gradually led me to the conclusion that I haven't been a very good real-life friend to very many people. I **haven't** done that thing that gets talked about in every movie and every essay on friendship: I haven't been there as a supportive presence for people in hard times. Not very much. Part of me wants to say that it took my mother dying, and having to be there for my dad, for me to understand what being there for someone really means. Kind of late in life to learn that stuff. <br /><br />But I'm trying harder now. Still in a very limited way, because, see above, shy like a pigeon. (Or maybe I shouldn't blame shyness. Maybe it's just selfishness.) <br /><br />I thought I might segue into talking about how being in a social-media space composed of actual friends lends itself to certain types of posts and inhibits others, but as I think about it more, I think a lot of that comes down to personal styles--it's actually hard to generalize on. Maybe what I could talk about would be my <i>own</i> feelings on that--but another time.<br /><br /><br /><sup>1</sup>And not just social media. Acquaintanceship through some shared activity can be like this; my interactions with people in my book group feels similar. Warm, friendly, but not too deep.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=asakiyume&ditemid=856375" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments