Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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I was essentially at a loss for words, sitting at the quaint restaurant table with Lindsay and Dante trying to explain. I couldn’t figure out how i felt about New Hope… i felt like we were trapped in one of those quaint tourist trap towns and that it was like walking around in a life-sized dollhouse where nothing was real. It was more than that, though… more surreality like rose flavored ice cream that made me feel like i was in a novel somewhere other than circling around Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware.

So, we were at dinner and Lindsay decided for me that i should have brought a notebook with me, and i’m sure that i should have because i lost everything i had meant to say. I suppose i’m just so obsessed with being in a city and being metropolitan that it seems impossible to me that people live just around the corner from these shops… selling strange musical instruments and fantastical ice cream and ultra-hot salsa only to walk back home and lay down to sleep under those same stars.

Oh yeah, you could see stars. Everywhere. Our trip straddled Pennsylvania and New Jersey and we walked back and forth across a bridge whose wooden foot path was so worn that it seemed just like walking on a dirt road. We all wondered at once where the state lines were drawn… the middle of the river, or the middle of the bridge? I finally figured that they’d probably be indicated on old claimer’s maps, but then it came down to where exactly those hand-drawn maps would set the border in real life and we were back to where we started.

Other things happened too, that i can’t quite put back together into the blog they were meant to be. There was an armor store that was selling arrowheads from 200bc, and i couldn’t fathom how just anybody had the right to own something that old and have it sitting in a display case with a “please inquire” pricetag on it. I kept arguing with Lindsay that nothing could taste like a rose after we first passed the ice cream shop while still in the car, and finally she just replied: “it tastes just like it smells. You can taste anything you can smell!” And that was that until i actually bought my triple scoop and the owner made me try it first because “some people taste it and then just walk out on me.” And it tasted like… rose petals. It was flavored in that subtle way that green tea ice cream is, with the ultra-dark pastel color and the taste that slides off of your tongue while you’re trying to absorb it.

After we had walked around for a while i finally got used to the idea of everything being real, but i still can’t figure it out. It feels like it should be some tiny historical town tucked into Massachusetts because i always forget that Philadelphia is the exception to the rule of Pennsylvania and not the other way around. Everything in New Hope was vivid… all the local teenagers we saw working in the shops were like caricatures of people i know… three times as many piercings or hair twice as outrageous or poise that’s so much more postured. I realize that somehow it’s their reaction to living in a sort of suspended time where all of the shops and streets stay the same and people from outside come in to gawk, but at the same time it felt like i was looking at a catalogue of teenaged stereotypes trying to find the ones that matched my own friends.


Of course, those are all just snippets… glimpses into my surreal afternoon, because i should have bought a notebook instead of the two cds i bought. Live and learn.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/6883375/

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In Com Theory last week we touched upon Mead’s Theory of Symbolic Convergence, and one of the primary principals of it is the concept of the “Other,” which is the version of ourselves that we create based on society’s view of us. Without delving too deeply into the theory, basically when we refer to ourselves as “me” we are referring not to what we are, but what everyone else has labeled us as. And, in light of all of this, i just feel like i am in a constant power-struggle to keep “I” somewhere close to “me.” If you take that a step farther you could imply that people’s definitions of me inevitably reflect on my behaviour because i am either conforming to their expectations or trying to subvert them.


If you can’t see how fucked up it is for that to be imposed on a still-developing person for the entirety of their adolescence and young-adult life i’ll have to lend you my textbook sometime.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6486287/

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I am back in Philadelphia, complete with my newly mellowed red hair and my newly mellowed personality that i have yet to assign a color to and this newly hollow ache for the tiny slice of else i had this weekend. Normalcy and a different city and walking around and being happy — things that i can’t really necessarily apply to Drexel and Philadelphia, but i try. Today i walked into the Admissions Office and everyone fawned over my hair for a solid hour before i got to do any work. Last night i got 100% on my first test of the quarter. Baby steps on a long walk.


There is a door in the frame of my room and it feels so very different to shut it and be insulated from the rest of the apartment except for the hi frequency bleed-through from Lindsay’s room downstairs. I am cocooned in my warm-lit green and white and brick, slowly working through my stack of Boston music and making a point of looking forward to tomorrow and the next day. Because, even though i might not see a point in either of them, somewhere past there there is a day that i want to be on and i’ve got to live the inbetween to get there. That’s how getting places works; you have to endure the inbetweens.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6423711/

crossovers

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It occurs to me that while Rabi is getting to be quite analogous to a independent film star when it comes to her relation to the so-called A-List of bloggers, i am still largely in my own self-contained little universe, the upshot of which being that not nearly all of Rabi’s readers read me but a vast majority of my readers read her. As my artificially constructed midterm break with Rabi enters day three of coverage on four separate personal sites along with a myriad of group blogs and comment chains these two sorts of readers are having two different sorts of reactions. Rabi’s readers are probably just gleaning extra context on their beloved Rabi-verse via my perspective on it, but for my readers this goes a little beyond context: it’s really an all-out crossover.

For those of you who aren’t huge comic book fans, crossovers are when members of the cast of one comic book (say… Superman) are featured in the plot of a second comic (perhaps… Wonder Woman) and then the story continues in their own. This can be a one-shot deal, or it can go on and on for months at a time. The thing about crossovers is that you can’t just read one half of them; either (a) you need both halves (and in some cases, more than four or five different “halves” for each month of crossing) to have any hope of understanding the storyline or (b) you are so obsessed with your favourite characters that you cannot help but buy the crossover titles regardless of your chances of understanding the plot as a whole.

It seems to me that regular readers of mine who dabble in being a fans of Rabi must be participating in some of the above behavior right now, because god knows i’d do the same thing if any of my favourite loggers were hanging out with their peers. When i mentioned it to Rabi she understood what i meant, and we agreed that she would be Superman if i could be Wonder Woman.

That just about says it all, doesn’t it?