In my younger years I just loved those bad boys. You know, the ones who are so screwed up that they make you think of bloody wounds when you look at the lush lines of Renoir
Kalilily Time
Just an old lady talking to herself
In my younger years I just loved those bad boys. You know, the ones who are so screwed up that they make you think of bloody wounds when you look at the lush lines of Renoir
Actually, Elaine, I forwarded Chris the link to the blogsister’s post on “love and attachment” by dharma girl because she was writing on and in a style that is very relevant to what he’s been writing about, and because she posted it in the very public forum of blog sisters.
Her post and her larger assumptions about “love and attachment” — not to mention her calling others “lazy,” “co-dependent” and “dependent on a man” (there were worse modifiers, but in prime passive aggressive style, she’s taken down her blog, so I can’t refer to them now) — if they can’t just meditate their pain away and achieve magical completeness. At 20.
please.
i for one had no idea until well after the fact, when I delved into her blog just before she pulled it, that this is a VERY young woman in fact who has some serious past trauma and abuse issues she hasn’t even begun to touch yet. This became evident in my reading of her previous posts. If I may say, she really isn’t in a place to deconstruct where a middle-age divorced woman on Yahoo Personals is coming from, as she tried to do in her post as well, by asking why this woman needed a man to “complete” her.
No amount of casting stones at old people for not having “worked on themselves” is going to help her grow. And grow up. Listening and participating and engaging will.
She’s free to shut down her blog. It’s a shame for this young lady though. She had a real opportunity to grow here, to find a genuine voice (and eventually self) here. Instead she chose to run. Maybe she’ll run on back here in a few years and let us all know if her perspective has changed.
That’s my two cents. And since you invoked my good name, I thought i’d have my say. 😉
Let’s go back even further. I was the one who suggested to Dharma Girl that she post her piece on Blog Sisters. I thought it was an authentic reflection of one young woman’s struggle to voice her journey, to begin to find her own way to deal with the complexities of life on all fronts. Blog Sisters seemed like a good place to perhaps get some insightful comments. After all, don’t we respect each other’s individual journeys? Don’t we have empathy for the struggles of others who are starting off from places different from ours? And she did not name names, did not throw rotten tomatoes in anyone’s identiable face. Her critical generalities were obviously her efforts to verbally work through the confusions of what it means to love and care and accept the responsibilities of an intimate human relationship. You should know better than to think that RB would do anything less destructive than he did. Mea culpa for assuming that the blogosphere has, underneath all the chatter and clatter, a caring heart.
And I just publicly apologized to Dharma Girl on Blog Sisters, since it was my original good intention that went bad.
Hello, this is the owner of Dharma Girl. I thought I would leave a comment, both to thank Elaine for saying what she has said at this time, and to reply to something that Jeneane has said about me.
If I made any assumptions about other people, then you have also made an assumption about me by saying that I have not even “begun to touch” my “serious past trauma and abuse issues.” All I mentioned in my blog was that I had been the victim of childhood abuse, but I didn’t get into details, and I don’t want to get into details here because it isn’t anyone else’s business but my own.
Yes, I was abused as a child. Honestly, I am over it. I’ve been over it for years. There are other things, such as abuse that occurred later in life, in my teens, that I haven’t gotten over, but it’s not “serious trauma” that would in anyway effect my ability to think clearly about relationships.
I wasn’t “casting stones on old people” as you say. I actually prefer the company of older people than the company of people my own age, because I find it easier to relate to them. If the ad had said “20, SWF, looking for love” or whatever, I would have felt the same way about it. Age and life experience had nothing to do with it. What I wrote had everything to do with my own personal feelings about relationships. My blog had a very small readership, mainly consisting of very close friends of mine who would have understood by the way I was talking and from what they already knew about me what I was saying and why I was saying it. I didn’t realize that someone was going to take my insignificant babble and attempt to publicly humiliate me with it, including criticising my grammar. If this is what authors do with their spare time, then I’d prefer to remain the stupid, unaware and self-centred person that RageBoy sees me as. At least I’m not deliberately trying to damage people.
I didn’t actually choose to run. I had been thinking about shutting down my blog for awhile, because I’d been getting sick of all the nastiness going on in the blogosphere, especially on forums. Nothing like this had happened to me before though, and I figured it was the most opportune time to do what I’d already been planning on doing anyway.
Maybe she’ll run on back here in a few years and let us all know if her perspective has changed.
My opinions on this matter probably will have changed in a few years’ time. I have no illusions that the ideas I have now are the same I’ll have in ten years. My ideas have changed dramatically in only the past two years. But does that mean that I shouldn’t be writing down what I’m feeling right at this moment? That’s what everyone in the blogosphere is doing – we are writing in journals, people, and we are not always going to agree with what other people have to say. That is no reason to deliberately hurt someone on a blog where public comments cannot even be made in return.
I was absolutely shocked and devastated by what RageBoy did. I had a good cry about it when my husband came home and I told him what had happened. I honestly do understand why people would have been annoyed by what I wrote, but wouldn’t a better course of action be to email me about it, so that we could have an interesting discussion? Instead you chose the more “fun” route of a public flogging. No doubt I would have appreciated hearing other people’s opinions. I even said that to RageBoy in an email after he posted that rant up. There are things he said, and things you have said, about what I wrote that are understandable and that have made me think again about my thoughts on this issue.
WHY assume that just because I am young that I am also stupid and that I do not deserve the courtesy of an email or a comment? WHY resort to doing something so disgusting as what was done? That is what I want to know, because I don’t believe there is anything in that journal entry that warranted such an attack.
Thank you,
Lindsay
Oh, I just thought I would add another thing:
RageBoy replied to my email, seeming apologetic for what he’d said (while at the same time saying that he wouldn’t apologize, for whatever reason). He seems to put on an entirely different face when he’s in public and plenty of people are reading, expecting to digest the oh-so-clever words of a man who seems to hate everyone, since cynicism and sarcasm seem to be what people like to read. And he is an author, after all.
Based on his email correspondence however, I’d say he’s a pretty nice guy that I’d probably get along with just fine.
Lindsay, it’s unfortunate that you closed down your weblog, but as you say, it’s probably not an environment for you. The world is full of dark as well as light, and people will be equally caustic and gentle. If we’re not comfortable with this, then we post gentle poems and photos of children and kittens and likely we’ll never have to deal with cutting wit, burning repartee.
But when you do make statements such as you did, you must expect that you’ll touch others pain, others anger, and they will respond. That’s the way of the world, not just weblogging. We’re not all sweetness and light, and group hugs. If we were, I’d find all the people here to be a dead bore.
Perhaps later you’ll return. Perhaps not. Good luck to you either way.
It’s interesting that Lindsay is perceptive enough to understand that Rage Boy’s persona is just the opposite of Chris Locke personality. But I don’t buy RB in any form or as any excuse for free speech. He’s the evil twin, the bad seed. Both Foodini and Pinhead (for those who were kids near NYC’s tv radius during the 50s.) “Honi soit qui mal y pense.”
And the Crone’s sage blessings on you, Dharma Girl. Grow that thick skin and come on back to blogsville.
Shelley:
I do not mind people being upset by something I’ve written and bringing it up with *me* – however, it is an entirely different thing to take something I said and twist it all around publicly in order to make oneself appear clever. After all, RageBoy spent most of his rant not criticising what I’d said about relationships, but criticising my choice of moniker and spirituality. It appears that he has his own personal problems to work out in that area, since he is so quick to jump on anyone else who dares to call themselves “spiritual.” I felt that it wasn’t just a critique on what I’d said, but a personal attack on myself, as a human being. He went so far as to call me stupid, and to attempt to tear me down as a person. In private, through emails, it was a very different story. He actually seemed very supportive of me, apologetic, and concerned about how what he’d said had affected me.
I find it amusing how throughout this whole thing, there have been many comments about my age and implications about my lack of maturity and/or life experience, while at the same time the “adults” are the ones behaving in a way that is reminiscent of recess in Kindergarten. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to play without me.
Lindsay
I am Alice or Writing Through the Looking Glass
Sometimes enough disparate elements come together and you have to write about it because to do otherwise would be to toss fate’s good idea down the drain. So I find myself writing about writing and weblogging and self-censorship, when I think I should …
I am Alice or Writing Through the Looking Glass
Sometimes enough disparate elements come together and you have to write about it because to do otherwise would be to toss fate’s good idea down the drain. So I find myself writing about writing and weblogging and self-censorship, when I think I should …
Lindsay,
If your concerns are what you say they are, then taking down your blog was a good idea. As Shelley points out, this isn’t a medium where what you say is vaild just because you say it. We grow here by discussing things in a public place among each other. One voice INFORMS the next. and when you say things that are loaded and/or demeaning, you will find voices out there who will come back at you with both barrels.
you have a choice then–you write more about it or you don’t.
At Elaine’s urging (I see), you posted your take on the world of love and human relationships in one of the most public spaces in blogging–blogsisters. What you wrote was, in my opinion, passive aggressive, insulting, and self-congratulatory. It deserved to be called out as such. That’s my take on it, and if I had had the energy, I would have posted a response on my blog asap, and you wouldn’t have liked that one either judging by your sensitivity.
Bloggers don’t email one another in private to discuss important issues. That’s why we b-l-o-g. You post in public, others post in public, interested readers follow the links and discussion. Many of us disdain private sidebars in email about public posts because it weakens the conversation. That’s how it works. It’s not Rageboy or Chris Locke or my or Elaine’s job to teach you anything here in some sort of private, behind the scenes tutorial. If you want to run away because you got “took to school” then that’s your decision. Although, you say here you were taking down your blog anyway.
In any event, you are correct–at this point in your life, blogging probably isn’t the right genre for your voice, though I do hope we see you back here one day. I look forward to seeing what you make of that post of yours in 10 or 20 years.
best to you. really.
jeneane
Well, as you might expect, I disagree with Jeneane. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last, I’m sure. We come from different experiences as women in relationship to men. Oddly enough, as someone older and as someone who has, in the past, issued a personal ad (heh), I did not feel at all demeaned by Lindsay’s take on the challenges of finding and keeping a mate. I did not at all interpret her style as passive aggressive. As I’ve said before, we tend to see/interpret the world (and maybe “word” as well) not as it is, but as we are.
Interestingly enough, I have had past experiences of knowing that previously mentioned bloggers were phone calling and emailing behind the scenes to discuss public posts by others. So, I’m not sure I think Jeneane’s comment on that issue is valid. And, as a professionally trained and experienced educator, I definitely think emailing-as-tutorial is perfectly valid if it’s done in the spirit of being instructive rather than destructive. But that’s must my opinion, of course. 🙂 What does an old Crone like me know anyway?
It’s not that I disagree with you Elaine. It’s that I’m right and you’re wrong. 😉
p.s., the emailing thing of which I was speaking, and if you weren’t so busy trying to hurl veiled insults you might have noticed, is when two disagreeing blog parties take it behind the wall to continue their disagreement, and then come back to blog pieces of the conversation, which gets readers and the bloggers in question precisely nowhere, generally speaking.
When two or more bloggers use email to BITCH or LAUGH or CRY or PISS ON THE FLOOR behind the scene about what they’ve read in the blogworld, that is called friendship. That is not blogging. That’s emailing. Telephones work similarly.
see?
once again: jeneane right, elaine wrong.
jeneane aggressive, elaine passive aggressive.
;-)))))))))))))))))))))))))
Once again, we will have to agree to disagree. I don’t view the role of men in general or Rage Boy in particular the way you do. I don’t view most women who disagree with you or Rage Boy the way that you do. I don’t write the way you do, and I don’t forge strong blogger friendships over the phone the way you do. And, except for that “Sad Bad Boy,” I don’t tend to put labels — pop psych or other — on people, recognizing that we are all complex individuals with often very different life experiences. My dear complicated young woman, “sticks and stones…,” you know. You can do better than that.
Question: Is trying to be confrontational using civility, logic, and clarity (and mabe some small attempt at cleverness) being “passive aggressive?” Not by any definition I could find.
This is a reprise of my post of last December 19. Oh well, if at first you don’t succeed….
Being relentless is one of my best qualities and one of my worst. It’s the one that allowed me whatever successes I had advocating for the arts and humanities in education — which are always the first to be cut out of the school budget and which many classroom teachers don’t understand how to integrate into what they already are teaching.
It’s also a quality that makes people and bloggers tell me “enough already.”
So my mantra for the coming year is going to be from my favorite translation of Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching, #8.
The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep into the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.
No fight. No blame.
Not relentless like crashing waves, or incessant hail stones. Rather, relentless like the steady, even flow of clear, cleansing water. Here’s hoping.
Lindsay, thanks for saying that I seem like “a pretty nice guy that I’d probably get along with just fine.” I think so too. As I wrote to you in email, I think there are important issues here that are, once again in totally typical fashion, getting swept under the rug in favor of easy name calling. btw, I didn’t call you stupid — sorry if it came across that way. the comment was aimed at a very broad swath of people (more like Depak Chopra and that ilk) who sling around “spiritual” terms without knowing, really, what they’re talking about.
but really, enough of all this. let’s get back to all being pals and having fun and interesting conversations. in aid of world peace, then, I offer the following story, which was told to me personally by the Dalai Lama (oh yeah, we go WAY back!) So…
A blonde is pulled over for speeding. As it happens, the police officer also happens to be a blonde. She steps up to the driver’s window and asks for a driver’s license. The driver searches frantically in her purse and finally asks: “What does a driver’s license look like?”
Irritated, the cop says, “You dummy, it’s got your picture on it!”
The driver frantically searches her purse again and finds a small rectangular mirror. She looks at it and sees her own image, so she figures it must be her driver’s license. She hands it to the policewoman.
The blonde cop looks at the mirror, hands it back to the driver and says, “You’re free to go. And, if I had known you were a police officer too, we could have avoided all this hassle.”
Heh. Very clever. I get it. You don’t have to use names to call names.
But the bottom line is that really that we each see the world as we are. I don’t buy into yours; you don’t buy into mine. And it really doesn’t matter to me until I see yours doing some mean-spirited and undeserved damage. It’s the Xena in me.
You’ve got me interested in the world of psychological namings. I found this very relevant and interesting:
autism
n : (psychiatry) an abnormal absorption with the self; marked by communication disorders and short attention span and inability to treat others as people.
I’m so sorry. Really.
This discussion of civility and style has spidered out to a large space in blogville. I connected here through a post by Shelley via a trackback on Wealth Bondage. Everyone has some good points. Personally, I think the “Rage Boy” style is way too common, and although Chris is witty, it really fails as a style because there is nothing new here. This is the energy of badly socialized geek boys on the Net, and I’ll give Chris that his is more inventive than most, but it’s just one of the shallow “Flame Warriors” personas.
That said, Jeneane makes some good points about how to conduct yourself in public forums. There are plenty of Rage Boys out there who are all too ready to take anyone to task, and if you want to play, you need to develop ways of dealing with this. Ignoring it is a good one, but you might learn more by engaging a bit more deeply. If you can see a more thoughtful person behind the personna, try to engage that energy in a mock battle. The main thing is that it is up to you; make the choice. Withdrawing your blog is a choice, and I think that is what Jeneane is calling “passive agressive”. You can’t put that one on Rage Boy, he has no power to make anyone take down their blog unless you give it to him.
You can’t make the Flame Warriors go away, but in my view, blogging is a very good way to develop your voice in collaboration with a community. The parts of it that are more public may gather some unwanted attention, but it is still up to you what you want to do with that energy. Take it in, react to it, or just ignore it and keep your energy for what is important to you.
Damn, the comment system dropped my links: http://weblog.burningbird.net/fires/001517.htm and http://wealthbondage.com
Mock battles. Yes. But you have to have a very thick skin to get into those, especially if you’re not one of those “bad socialized geek boys.” Which I’m probably the opposite of. But, the truth is, I think Rage Boy is a worthy adversary. Certainly out of my league, since I’m not a Flamer. But that hasn’t stopped me and I don’t expect that it will. Until I just get tired of the whole thing, I guess.
And yes, there are a lot players out there like him, although he certainly is one of the more clever and creative. But I happen to play on some the same turf that he does, and I’m not easily intimidated. So I guess we’ll just have to keep contending with each other. Contend. Contention. Consternation. He can’t con the Crone.
Lindsay, you go grrl! pull down your blog, reinvent, and put it up again. just fuck the noise!
take Christopher Locke as an example rather than an adversary. realize that your voice is already so forceful at age twenty, that you have touched a deep nerve in the fifty five year old Rage boy. a man who, in his truly offbeat way, probably cares a great deal about you. no, not probably, i know he cares about you.
i know that because he has cared about me even when he wanted to wring my neck. he wants you to stand up to him, to fight back. to stand up for yourself. he has had to rise from the ground more times than he can count, and he expects alot from his comrades.
get up again, Lindsay. be true to your own voice. don’t let the male hierarchy slap you down.
++
P.S. RB is full aware of how stupid he is.
oh, and anyone picking on a twenty year old blogger is just fucking dumb.
++
What’s a “RageBoy”? Is he someone I should be reading?
😐
Nice place you have here, Kalilily. I like places where all manner of curious beasts stroll through. Some go better with beans.
I’m not naming any names; just enjoying the thoughts of you and all your visitors. I’d appreciate it though, if you’d drop a line when it’s time for the real spankings to begin.
-The passive-passive-oft-confused-aggressive-by-proxy-5th-degree-from-Kevin’s-bacon-lightly-toasted-Cowboy-tilting-at-windvains-insomniac-saying-“Howdy!”
Chris calls it Synchronicity City.
today, after reading Mr. Locke’s feeble attempt to repair his most recently masterminded disaster, then firing off a hot email telling him exactly what i thought, i read Lindsay’s blog.
just as she finds she no longer needs to seek the approval of her Father, i realize that i no longer need to seek the approval of Christopher Locke. wow. i really thought it would never end.
free from my self imposed constraints. i do not need to fill in his blanks to excuse my naivete of four years ago. what a relief.
then in my true live-in-reverse-fashion, i realized that Chris did not mastermind a disaster…he tried to, to be sure…because he is troubled…but he only succeeded in giving attention to a beautiful, new, powerful, female, voice. even Mr. Locke couldn’t screw this one up!
Lindsay has met this onslaught with dignity, humour, truth, and style. and she’s a damn fine writer!
Jeneane, what did you write? something like… perhaps this genre isn’t for her, but you hope to see her back here? how kind of you considering that she just beat you at your own game without even knowing that she was on the board.
a voice is born as one struggles to grow up. the beat goes on. Thank you, Mr. Locke.
++
deddette, you beat me to it. I was just ruminating about posting something very much like what you said. Chris managed to transform what I called the worst kind blogger practice into what I think is one of the best. And it’s much to his credit that it all worked out as well as it did. Everyone was open to what the others were trying their best to say — open and thoughtful and suportively playful. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed being in the game; and it definitely was a game after a certain point. I have lots I want to say about that game and the players, so stay tuned.
Wow, I didn’t realize until today that people were still leaving comments here. I am really surprised at how this whole thing has turned around, and I appreciate everyone’s participation and support, even if you didn’t always agree with me.
Thank you deddette for your kind words. I’m not very good at receiving “praise,” and I’m actually blushing in real life, so I’ll just leave it at that and hope you all know how much of an impact this has made on me over the past few days. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and this one event has tremendously helped me in sorting out problems that I never thought I’d be able to deal with.
So thank you all for speaking your minds, regardless of your opinions on the matter. In the beginning I saw RageBoy as my “enemy” and he is actually the person who has helped me out the most here. So as he says, things are not always what they seem, and curses often actually turn out to be blessings.
Is this site still alive?
yes, this site is still alive and doing very well, thank you. but this post is several years old, and long forgotten by the commenters.