Reality

Try anything once and what you see is what you get…well, not quite for me. I’d love to say it is but whilst I’ll try anything once I’ve had too many people think some really quite bizarre things about me based on my appearance, they assume I’m a vegetarian, I’m a prude, I’m out to steal other people’s boyfriends/girlfriends. I don’t realy mind the first two, but all three just really write home to me how much some people seem to be preoccupied by appearances and how much they get stuck on them. Appearances matter less than I ever thought they could really, if I’d told my teenage self half the things I knew from experience then my teenage self would doubtless have responded that appearances shouldn’t matter but that they did.

Of course they matter socially. If you pay attention to that sort of thing. Socially what I’m interested in is people meeting people, rather than behaving in a particularly acceptable fashion, not talking religion or politics over dinner for example.

Once upon a time I thought that that sort of thing was really only for people of my grandparents generation, not for all of my parents generation given that they lived through the social upheaval of the sixties. But social climbing and keeping up appearances, how can that possibly be for anyone of my generation? We have questions of science, of truth, of art that we can really plough forth into, people should be valued for themselves rather than what they can give, or worse still, for the appearance of what they can give.

The one thing I always hated about the Third Blue Eyes was that he asked me to keep quiet. Obviously on one level I hated being the dirty little secret, that he preferred his clean reputation to his actuality. On another I hated that I agreed, that I admitted that as far as surface level goes I fall into that category of women who have a reputation and that means that socially I tarnish what I touch, and I allowed people I considered friends and acquaintences to keep doing this, to believe that appearance matters.

Why is my generation doing this? Getting caught up on polished floors and houses and all of life’s fripperies when what matters is to be. Not the appearance of being, not the appearance of keeping up with whatever your friends are doing. Where is your search for truth?
Certain members of older generations call ours more superficial than their own. It’s not true, only that every generation contains members who care about what is real and members who care about what is not. More, every person has mixed within them a desire to conform and a desire to keep faith with what is real and necessary and good.

I wish I had not been naieve in assuming that we were better than any who had gone before, it makes the disappointment so much harder to bare. I hold a deep respect for anyone who really keeps to what is real, I suspect thats why I admire Lexy so very much. Me I am superficial, I do deal in what is illusory, deceptive, and by these illusions I think that I begin to understand what is actually real. Perhaps I don’t and I am no better than these people who imagine that constructed social reality actually matters.

We are young, we are supposed to be constructing our own ways, our own society, and am I wrong, are people doing that and I am simply frustrated because as with all social constructions women like me don’t play into the society in ways that are deemed nice? I’m sure theres a way of that in it, and for all the morals that I hold dear it is my appearance that counts.

There was a big part of American feminism that declared the other woman will no longer exist, all women will be sisters. In reality though, it is society that creates the other woman. It doesn’t matter if you do nothing except be friendly to an attached person, it doesn’t matter if you have an agreement with the other party/ies some women will always cling to the notion that social rules exist in a set way. Oh, not just women, obviously I have most experience of them, some people refuse to remake society, refuse to participate, use their brains, look at what is, but would rather subscribe to some set appearances.

Better get that parquet floor dear.

Why cling to old ways, we owe it to ourselves to make new ones. But I am left here, pretending that I tarnish all those I touch and that rules matter. How can I bare to pretend that such things matter? If I could be what I seemed I think I would, except that I think I seem quite different from each and every person who sees me: prude, slut, clever, stupid. But I’ll try anything once and, though I’m trying to learn tact I’d rather be honest than lie.

Gods. I refuse to be one of the superficial, real things matter and I’m going to be as like Lexy and all the rest of the people who do real things and tell the truth rather than think about what things look like. I don’t care who’s boring and who’s got a different set of morals to my own, I don’t care if someone has a different fashion sense as long as they’ll tell the truth about at least one part of life. Honesty is what matters after all and fuck the rest of the world as far as I’m concerned.