Beauty and Brains

I am become a blogwhore and something I’ve read somewhere has inspired me. It may have insipid me, I’m not sure. The insipid may be natural. Actually, I think it may have been BourbonBird on her work as an anime character. I think we can see the theme of this blog. Themes. Beauty and vanity. What fun is the one without the other? No, seriously. Two very separate things which frequently get together, mate, and produce some serious monsters. Shall I be wordy and clever and use leviathan? I do like that. Lovely word. Such a delicious grotesqueness to it. See how I almost dance around the topic? Wanting to and to not to. A confused little place to be. There will be some nasty personal truths here. How awful. How boring. How blog.

The line [it was easier to trawl for than to paraphrase, what a surprise] was ‘I was comfortable being socially uncomfortable to deal with’ [The Bird, July 2005, look right]. I think I’ve made a life of this. An entire lifestyle. It surely cannot be natural this terrible awkwardness that I am to deal with. I think it’s created. A projection. A creation of a persona to make it easier to be and not be. Life is nothing without contradiction, no? Perhaps it is me who is nothing without contradiction.

Where to begin once you’ve woken up to your nightmares?
I think I’ll start off with one of the decisions that I remember making – consciously – that has led me to here. Here being the unappealing character I’m telling you I am. There’s really nothing so fun as taking the scalpel to one’s self, is there? That might be irony.

This will surprise you – I was not a happy teenager. I was not a happy child. Actually I was an exceedingly shy watcher of a child. I was also quite a pretty child. I bring this up because it has relevance and also to appease my vanity. One must spend some small time in life being attractive, even if it’s in retrospect. As a teen though I was unhappy by situation, literal and since modified, and through habit. I don’t actually remember being a happy happy person. Not ever. I was serious even as a child. Perhaps what I’m saying is that I don’t now and never have suffered from a Pollyanna personality. I also had a fierce temper. Anyone who reads this and thinks they’ve seen me lose my temper is very wrong. I am a thousand fold calmer than I used to be and am now an easier personality.

I’ll get to the point. During my fun-filled teen days, or possibly before [I had the misfortune to be physically adult from the age of about 11. Very unfortunate. Nasty and wrong in so many ways.] I made the decision, consciously – she emphasises, to not play up to looks to not be, in my patois of the time, vain. Ironic,huh? I was a stupider child than I thought.
Inverse vanity.
I have suffered extremely from vanity ever since. Vanity that is not particular to looks. [I could if I wanted and it’d be good but I don’t want to so I won’t so aren’t I better than you?]. A delightful combination of vanity and fear informs everything I do. Again, not merely looks where not only do I not try but I go out of the ordinary to be unattractive. I do not have to be fat, I do not have to have bad hair, I do not have to dress badly, I do not have to not emphasise my looks to increase my attractiveness for fun or to feel good or whatever – I choose to. [Did I mention that this wasn’t going to be pretty?] [Oh but I’m so clever and funny.] I never really make an effort, like it’s beneath me to be attractive. There are so many dishonest advantages to this – the smallest effort and people behave like you’re suddenly gorgeous, they compliment you unnecessarily – you brush them off. It’s a cynical way to be but old habits die so hard.
Again, it does not begin and end with my looks. [Pity, because that would have been fun.]
I also suffer from ridiculous amounts of intellectual vanity. Undeserved and unproven. I am not a great intellectual. It took me five years to finish a B.A. and that was after failing pretty much as many classes as I undertook. Laziness in most cases. I can count the number of essays I got in on time. The number of exams I studied for. It really isn’t that difficult to pass. It’s not even that difficult to do better than pass. Oh dear, I’m doing it now. Woe me, I didn’t find it that hard. Not enough of a challenge. It is, of course, as much of a challenge as you make it – especially in the arts. It truly is a case of what you put in you get out. Very little equals not a whole lot. I still feel like a fraud. I also find it harder to see outside of my intellectual vanity than my physical. It’s more painful because I would otherwise have pretended that one was given up for the other. But no, the truth is I never really try. The same patterns for both arenas. None of the natural perfection that I am inclined to expect.

Work is, of course, an anathema. To work implies effort. Effort is trying. Trying suggests desire. Desire suggests. To do it, to work, suggests pandering to vanity. To try to look good, to try to achieve. To try is to compete. To compete is to participate. To participate is to put vanity back in its proper place. To participate is also to be like others. To lose difference.

How very tangled. How very twisted.