mizkit memed, and I cannot resist this particular meme, especially when Catie throws it out there. She asks questions that I don’t think to ask myself. The rules of the meme are:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
1. What person from history would you most like to sit down and have a talk with, and why? Hrm. Y’know, for a ringer, this might be the hardest question to answer. Roger Zelazny. The way he plays with his thoughts & words always makes me point at the book in my hand and go “lookit what he did!” Apart from that, he was by all accounts a fun and lovable guy.
2. Writing: what’s holding you back? Do you want to write, or do you want to have written? Nothing. That is, I am trying to hold me back, but I’m not letting it happen. Progress is happening, by painful inches. Why is it painful? Because I am scared to death; I have reached the place where I can reasonably say I am halfway done…which implies the ability to complete. If I complete, then I will have taken the First Step, to…to doing things that I like, that make me feel good during and after, that I’m proud of. Giving up all this angst and denial is much harder than I ever dreamt.
In fact, I want to write and have written. I love thinking about what and how I’ll say things, love writing them out and fiddling them until they’re right, and love the feeling of accomplishment when I get it right. Later, I am narcissist enough to love reading what I wrote. So, both.
3. You have a seemingly endless capacity for joy and delight in life. Do you consider yourself to actually be a joyful person, or are you just drawn that way? I do? I’ve always assumed, with my constant mulling of consequences and meaning, that I was a bit of a wet blanket. thinks Maybe. I am likely (if I am) that way partially because my father was a effervescently cheerful man, happily excited by the prospect of everything, and partly because I have been working diligently to let go of the black cloud that has followed me around since I was, maybe, ten years old. So, drawn and driven, both.
4. Tell me your favorite poem (either by quoting it or linking to it) and tell me what it is about it that makes it your favorite. (This is probably a very English major question.) No shame in English geekery. My favorite rotates. Sometimes it’s Jabberwocky (because, with little understanding of what each word means — in spite of Humpty’s efforts to explain — it communicates the images & story perfectly) or Zelazny’s “Spring Morning: Missive” (because it deals with a brush with Legionaire’s Disease in terms of the sex life of emporer penguins, and is touching and funny and perfect and just the way I would feel about it, and in just that tone). If Ed will send me the text of Spring Morning: Missive, I’ll post it.
5. What would the greatest adventure be? The answer to this one frightened me, both for content and speed of arrival.
The greatest adventure would be to ditch all the luggage I carry, all the “gottas” I keep chained to my ankles, and do the scariest, most desireable thing I can think of at this moment; write, write, write…until it supports me or someone convinces me to stop before I hurt myself through starvation, or the world ends because I wasn’t turning the crank, or whatever.
Scary. The greatest adventure would be to let me do what I want to do.
Crossposted from Epinepherine & Sophistry