In RL, I turned 24 today, and although I’m still not done writing the bio of “Ina Centaur” (and far from finishing the full one) I guess you can read the bit of it here. I would request only that you not be ageist about my real-self – I didn’t mean to deceive you by not telling you straight ahead that I’m not the 50-year old “business maven” that you’ve somehow painted me as, nor do I want you to believe that because I am so young, I must necessarily be naive and cannot possibly understand you. I hope that actions speak louder than prejudices… And understand that few young people have the mental discipline and purpose to undergo a long period of seclusion; and that, although others may be less mature, I am different in my own way.
I decided to take the day off from SL to read a story a friend (whom I thought never read) forwarded me. Eudeamon. I really wasn’t expecting much from the story, but the first three pages really — I mean really — pulled me into it. The structure of the story is formulaic, and the bildungsroman is really only notable because of a series of deux ex machinas… the protagonist suffers the usual syndrome of appearing “clueless” in spite of her heroic feats and leaps to danger… but yet, that’s somehow realistic (to me, at least) in that jumping into a burning building to save a baby really is just “something to do” when the scenario is encountered. But, really, the content and the ideas and the world of Eudeamon - Eudemonia - they’re simply transcendental.
Eudemonia is a planned city that enforces a new form of punishment — one that Banished criminals by forcing them to wear stark black anonymizing suits hooked up to their neurophysiology and body that deliver punishments automatically for each transgression. These “Banished” are allowed to walk through the city, but would be punished if they contact civilians or enter houses or handle cash or if they pursue a number of other “common luxuries”. The public is told to ignore their existence (and although you’d probably cite more optimistic authors’ fic in how the public can’t be told to do things, from experience and RL, you would know full well that it really is the other way around… in reality, the public believes in whatever the state-muddled media and mind-controlling PR tells them), and the Banes’ punishment is supposedly further enhanced by their being in medias reas, and yet ostracized from both “everyday luxuries” and also the normal flow of society.
But honestly though my description really does not do the story justice *at all.* There is just so much more to it. Reading it and savoring every word, letting the story carry you to its climax is really a transcendental experience.
…
In other news, we finally got divorced today. In hindsight, I guess the relationship had been doomed to failure from the beginning. There’s the fact that he would risk hurting me just to save his “reputation”; he’d wreck a chunk of a city just out of dumbness; he doesn’t get the idea of “talking things through”; he’d really rather involve everyone in the world with his own personal drama… He typically demands that I look at every miniscule thing he makes immediately, and would throw this most outrageous childish tantrum otherwise – even if I am busy multitasking some major conference. (It’s hardly true the other way around. I’ll make something and — whether I’m shamelessly-self-ad about it or in my typically lowkey way — he’d basically just ignore it because it’s something *I* did… I’m generally prolific, but I don’t really have the time to tell people about *everything* I do… just the occasional stuff I find interesting.) He’d start a project, get me involved to do the art part of it and also to publicize it… and then belittle my work, abandoning it after I’ve invested not only painstaking hours, but also thousands of dollars… saying things like he can’t work all the time without pay (what the heck am I doing then?). He knows full well that I really can’t afford to pay him, nor did he mention *anything* about pay prior to the project, not unless I break out of this independent artist phase.
I keep on thinking of this character from my urban fantasy. Her father had warned her that if she married a paid goon, she’d eventually have to pay for sex. Quoting Alzarius: “The man doesn’t care about you. He cares only about your money–ahhh don’t interrupt me saying you’re not well-endowed like your cousins. He wants you for yourself. No, not that. I mean your intrinsic value. He sees you as a commodity to rip off one day, after he’s drained you of your talent, energy, and zeal for life. No, don’t turn away from me like that… The point is, eventually he will force you to pay for sex–you’re far more in love with him than he is with you… Stop it. Don’t you see? He’s impoverished out of will. He wants to constantly have to work for money–and if there’s something he does that won’t get him money, he’s going to eventually stop doing it. Yes, he will eventually stop loving you.”
But, honestly, for me it really doesn’t matter. He’s twelve years older than me, but I won’t get the chance to live to his age. As much as it pains me to think about it this way, I really can’t avoid it. More than anything else, I feel like a Bane — although I guess I’m stuck in Katrina (from Eudeamon)’s boat in that I wound up a Bane without actually commiting a major transgression. I’m divorced from the world, really, because unlike all its other denizens, I have the bittersweet lust for it, and making something out of it, but don’t have the luxury of time. I can’t have the external world define my value anymore. I have to find my eudeamon.
