\u201cBefore I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there \u2013 I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television \u2013 you don’t feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I have so many things to piece together here. Huxley talks about related things in The Doors Of Perception (1954). I\u2019m not sure what specific quote I would pull out in relation to this, but I have a twitter thread<\/a> if you wanna glance though it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m also reminded of some things that Jeannette Winterson has written about being adopted\u2026 \u201cAdopted children are self-invented because we have to be; there is an absence, a void, a question mark af the very beginning of our lives. A crucial part of our story is gone, and violently, like a bomb in the womb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the big award-winning movies to come out of Singapore was Ilo Ilo (2013), and I didn\u2019t watch it until fairly recently I think because I sensed that it would reveal things to me about myself that I wasn\u2019t comfortable facing yet. It\u2019s a movie about a Singaporean Chinese boy being raised by a Filipino domestic helper. Or you could say it\u2019s about the entire family. It\u2019s kind of somber, slice-of-life\u2026 it gave me \u201cphoto album\u201d vibes. There isn\u2019t a strong sense of an overarching narrative trying to get you to see anything, which can be kinda refreshing. I quite like this review by Stephen Holden<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Another movie that I watched recently was The Nanny Diaries (2007). I watched this one kinda by accident \u2013 my wife was watching it, and I joined in. It\u2019s maybe a little more upbeat and light-hearted in general, but is also ultimately devastating from the point of view of the child who gets to experience a nurturing presence from someone who actually cares for him, only to have that cruelly wrenched away from him, without even the opportunity to say a proper goodbye. I thought this review by Richard Shickel<\/a> does a pretty good job: \u201cThe Nanny Diaries is something of an odd-duck movie. It is not a broad comedy or a wildly romantic one, either. Nor is it Edith Wharton lite. But it does partake of all those modes in intelligently observant ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t want to go into too much detail into my own life but I will say that these movies affected me very deeply probably in large part because they reminded me of my own childhood experiences growing up with domestic helpers. People who didn\u2019t have such experiences themselves probably won\u2019t be as shaken to see someone else messed up by it. It\u2019s strange how the earliest memories get convoluted. A lot of the specifics are kind of messy \u2013 I can\u2019t quite remember people, timelines, names, places. But I remember feelings. I remember feeling the entire world go white and cold when I felt a sense of being abandoned. And I remember being told a story of someone else who was raised by a helper \u2013 when she left, he would cry every day at the window, and everyone else would make fun of him for this<\/em>. Even when I was hearing this story, everyone was laughing about it. And I felt a protective rage within me, for these poor children who are aliens in their own families, who lose the only connection they have to caring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n some notes\u2026 a nanny\u2019s reaction https:\/\/myartsyodyssey.wordpress.com\/2015\/03\/22\/sad-little-children\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n I spent quite a lot of time and energy wanting to be a kind of tough. I would occasionally try on conventional masculine tropes \u2013 going to the gym, trying to get muscular, trying to care about football. None of it was really my style. I think I married young in part because I was anxious to grow up, to stop being a child, to be taken seriously as a man, as an adult. For the most part I think this worked out really well for me. I\u2019ve written a lot about the despair and anguish I had over the years if you want to look into it<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n Disorientation<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feynman quote: \u201cI think it\u2019s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don\u2019t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we\u2019re here. I don\u2019t have to know an answer. I don\u2019t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This quote itself might be a bit of a minor rugpull for some people. It\u2019s hard to say. How are people doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The following Joseph Campbell quote is \u201cabout\u201d LSD, but\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe LSD phenomenon, on the other hand, is\u2014to me at least\u2014more interesting. It is an intentionally achieved schizophrenia, with the expectation of a spontaneous remission\u2014which, however, does not always follow. Yoga, too, is intentional schizophrenia: one breaks away from the world, plunging inward, and the ranges of vision experienced are in fact the same as those of a psychosis<\/strong>. But what, then, is the difference? What is the difference between a psychotic or LSD experience and a yogic, or a mystical? The plunges are all into the same deep inward sea; of that there can be no doubt. The symbolic figures encountered are in many instances identical (and I shall have something more to say about those in a moment). But there is an important difference. The difference\u2014to put it sharply\u2014is equivalent simply to that between a diver who can swim and one who cannot. The mystic, endowed with native talents for this sort of thing and following, stage by stage, the instruction of a master, enters the waters and finds he can swim; whereas the schizophrenic, unprepared, unguided, and ungifted, has fallen or has intentionally plunged, and is drowning.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I must(?) learn to be kind to the people who did not obsessively read history to protect themselves from getting rug pulled by \u201cunforeseeable\u201d tectonic events<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_1456%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F538cd3e2-29d1-4399-9082-addbc49969fe_1855x1040.png?w=770&ssl=1\")
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