Sometimes I like to go
out and just sit in a park, café or other place, seemingly doing nothing
meaningful or worthy of any mentioning. But that’s not true – I’m spying. My
stupid face is a perfect cover-up, no one suspects anything. I observe, take
notes, compare with older experiences and incorporate into my worldview frame.
There are people who can’t spot a billboard sign half their flat on their way
to work (hay sis^^), and some see new fruit on a bush. I like to observe and
see differences. Maybe that’s why I don’t pay attention to street name, but I
always remember what building there is, what surrounds it and the colors.
People ask me sometimes about how to get to this-and-that street (cause I have
city info sign on my head, yeah) and I usually ask: but what building you’re
looking for? Well, nothing outstanding and not a special skill anyway, but
sometimes people amuse me. Do I treat them like items at some exhibition? Sure.
Do I feel remorse? None whatsoever.
So
there is me with my derpy face as a cover-up and no one suspects I’m having a
terrible fun. I like to observe how people behave, how indigenous people differ
from foreigners and I feel kind of like B. Malinowski in doing this. We are the
country marred by “what people say” ghost. Grandmas sit in houses and bake pies
for idiotic grandkids even though they could go out and hang around, but it’s
“not appropriate” for their age. You know, we have a law here stating that if a
kid doesn’t have a job, parents have to support him/her even if the kid is now
a 55-yo bum. Also, kids have to support parents if they don’t have other
income, so we have cases of alcoholic fathers/mothers abandoning kids for 20
years and after that coming back and demanding a care. Nothing can be done,
it’s the law.
Back
to people, of course, we have this “what people say” inhibitor that prevents us
from doing things we may like. It’s the fear from being branded. But it’s a
common motif, Margaret Mitchell made Rhett say this: “be different and you’ll
be damned”. This is why our streets are dull, like corporations’ outfits. And
here’s the main difference between urban population and rural one. In cities,
people usually are more open to colors and to gaudy outfits, to speak only
about fashion. But outside of cities there is another world. Almost an alien
world. People in cities ask why people in villages don’t wear fashionable
clothes or drink amaretto coffee every morning, because “that’s what people
do”. But city people think milk and carrots come from a store. You don’t wear
Armani going every grey morning to milk the cow or dig the ground to sow the
carrots. Rural areas change slower, much slower than cities. Our cities may be
almost cosmopolitan ones, but our villages no, no matter how many LED TVs are
there in houses.
Anyway, I have a great laugh thanks to hipsters and all
those “mainstream is evil” types of people. Here, I said that, sue me. People
in their teens start to perceive their own existence as a completely separated
being, different from others. This is why teens want to stress out their own,
one-and-only “oneness”. Hipsters operate on the same premise – I’m different. And
to some outside observer, like me, all those “individuals” that are “nothing
like the person around”, are just the same mass of indistinguishable people.
Teen girls want to show they are so mature and individual? So we see thousands
of toasted, blackhaired/bleached whore-looking girls with hard-to-decipher age.
Indie music as anti-mainstream anthem? Oh well, all of them sound the same
anyway, so what’s so different? Plus, most of them can’t sing.
This is why I always
leer when I hear “oh, but I guess I’m the only one who…”, or “but I’m unique”.
Tyler Durden said it in a very blunt way: nope, you’re not a fucking unique
snowflake.
While
reading a book, watching movies/series/whatever, sometimes we say “I would
never do this!”, or “I’d totally react the same”. And there it goes your
uniqueness. Of course, in public there comes denial: “no, none of the
characters resembles me, I’m so so so damn unique!” Characters are based on
real characters and if we feel the connection or share emotions, it means there
is another person that shares even one common trait with us. Characters are
afraid of storm? Oh well, I know few people from my own life who are afraid of
those too. Unique, my ass.
I
wrote about that once. It sprouts out of some superiority feeling people have (“nah-uh,
you CAN’T know the same actors as me, you challenged 55IQ nerfherder!”) and is
it so hard to introduce something by “not sure if you’re familiar with…”
because that’s more polite and apprehensive than “I bet you don’t know…”. And
saying “I’m the weird one cause I like movies/people/candies no one likes/know”
just proves how stupid such person is. So, you know 40 people and no one likes
the same things as you do? Well, guess what, world has over 6 billions of
people, trust me, there IS someone who likes/knows the exactly same thing you
do. We all share common taste, we all can be divided into groups, we may be
different on psychologically-philosophical level (ontic status, yep), but we
can be grouped and linked by similar taste with thousands or millions (it
varies, we belong at the same time to dozens of groups). Even with people we
don’t know and never will.
Ramblings
above were sponsored by a girl in a minibus today when I was coming back from Holiday break. She was saying something, blah blah, like
I care, but then she and another girl (probably friends, them teens, you never
know) started to talk about movies, and this said girl stated she’s probably
the only girl who likes horror movies.
Nah, I bet Diva likes
them too, after all if you run out of hair conditioner – what a horror for a
girl!!
Would I care if there were more people having same
interests and traits as me? Nope, world would be more funky and less serious
place for sure! I love KRY, so does 25634163 people. Do I cry I’m not unique in
my loving them? Nope, it means those people have damn great taste in music.
