On 18/1/05 3:51 PM, "Andrew Burke" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hey, not a silly question at all
Glad about that, Andrew, and it was nice to read your odyssey through
"normalities". Reading the Larkin article, I was struck by how much it
rested on the question of being "normal". Like most people, I used to want
to be the same as everyone else when I was an adolescent - I longed to have
jeans and a windcheater, mainly so I could just be invisible (we didn't have
the same clothes as our peers, as my mother got most of ours from op shops).
Then, a bit later, in my 20s I guess, the idea of being "normal" gave me the
horrors - I had this recurring nightmare that I lived in a brick veneer home
with a chainlink fence around that didn't have a gate, trapped, and that's
what I thought it meant. May have had something to do with my father's
constantly iterated desire for me to get a nice husband and "settle down".
As you say, that's pretty conventional as well, and I rebelled in most of
the conventional ways. These days I don't think about it much, apart from
when I'm contemplating my bank balance (or imbalance); I'm just who I am,
and most of the time that's fine, both the good and the bad of it. Most of
what I am is pretty banal, and that's fine too. Doug's comment (welcome
back, Douglas!) reminds me of some abnormalities which one is better off
without, and which I've seen too much of too close to hand to think at all
romantic. But it also reminds me of how the psychiatric profession and
other forces can play on the norm in ways that are less than positive, how
the norm is used to suppress dissent, and so on. And not in just the
obvious ways, either: mass outpourings of grief, say, can be an interesting
gauge, if one doesn't share them, like when Princess Diana died. I guess an
inner ecological balance is hard enough to find anyway, without worrying
about what other people think!
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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