Deformation Fascination
May. 6th, 2003 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerI have a 3 second attention span. Well, maybe slightly longer - I can, after all, read books and watch films without too much trouble. But I need to be entertained on a fairly constant basis or my boredom centre kicks in and demands that I do something before it explodes.
This is the reason why I read when I'm in the toilet on the bus and walking from one place to another. In the unusual event of me being stuck somewhere without something to do to entertain me my mind tends to wind itself up to a fever pitch for a few minutes before giving up entirely. This is usually the point where I start thinking, but the intermediate stage of frustration is too much of a pain to go through very often and it's not like I don't think a fair bit as it is.
Anyway, needing perpetual stimulation isn't the only result of my low boredom threshhold - I also have a fairly insatiable appetite for new 'stuff'. I'm neophilic, although not to the level where I don't think that traditional methods have any use, I'm just not as interested in things I know as in things I don't know yet.
I discovered people fairly late on - having had very few friends at school, I made some more while at university but didn't really start to understand people in any way until I was at least 22 - up to that point they very much felt like strange creatures that acted in bizarre ways. Having latched onto people as this strange new source of fascination I then (unconsciously) treated them like any other kind of information resource – draining as much as I could out of them before going onto the next one. I wasn’t quite as bad as that, not being entirely emotionless, and I’m still good friends with some of them – but looking back on it my behaviour was less that of a friend and more that of a blood-sucking parasite, leaping from host to host whenever I became bored with the flavour of my current food-source.
Sometime between age 27 and 29 my fascination with people slowed down to a crawl as I got more of a feeling for how they work (I’m still not terribly good in some respects, but my intellectual understanding of the basics is at a level I’m fairly happy with). I stopped wanting to spend all of my time with people and some of my old fascinations kicked back in – I spent some time coding for fun for the first time in years, my journal gave me an outlet for creativity that I’d not needed in years.
Anyway – the reason for this entry was my observation that the people I’m more interested in are the strange ones (“gosh, really?” says anyone who got this far). Obviously, if you constantly want to be kept interested by something different, once you’ve got an idea of the middle ground, the further from that point people are the more fascinating they are to you. And it’s not just mentally different – I find physical abnormalities irresistible. This is made worse by the fact that people are generally embarrassed by them. So when I see people with odd markings on them I’m simultaneously drawn to them but have to spend half my time trying to avoid looking at them. Things that people find ugly about themselves I find alluring (although not in a sexual way – I don’t get aroused by strangeness, I’m just fascinated by it in the same way I’m fascinated by amazing rock formations, Giger artwork or Escheresque architecture.
This is the reason why I read when I'm in the toilet on the bus and walking from one place to another. In the unusual event of me being stuck somewhere without something to do to entertain me my mind tends to wind itself up to a fever pitch for a few minutes before giving up entirely. This is usually the point where I start thinking, but the intermediate stage of frustration is too much of a pain to go through very often and it's not like I don't think a fair bit as it is.
Anyway, needing perpetual stimulation isn't the only result of my low boredom threshhold - I also have a fairly insatiable appetite for new 'stuff'. I'm neophilic, although not to the level where I don't think that traditional methods have any use, I'm just not as interested in things I know as in things I don't know yet.
I discovered people fairly late on - having had very few friends at school, I made some more while at university but didn't really start to understand people in any way until I was at least 22 - up to that point they very much felt like strange creatures that acted in bizarre ways. Having latched onto people as this strange new source of fascination I then (unconsciously) treated them like any other kind of information resource – draining as much as I could out of them before going onto the next one. I wasn’t quite as bad as that, not being entirely emotionless, and I’m still good friends with some of them – but looking back on it my behaviour was less that of a friend and more that of a blood-sucking parasite, leaping from host to host whenever I became bored with the flavour of my current food-source.
Sometime between age 27 and 29 my fascination with people slowed down to a crawl as I got more of a feeling for how they work (I’m still not terribly good in some respects, but my intellectual understanding of the basics is at a level I’m fairly happy with). I stopped wanting to spend all of my time with people and some of my old fascinations kicked back in – I spent some time coding for fun for the first time in years, my journal gave me an outlet for creativity that I’d not needed in years.
Anyway – the reason for this entry was my observation that the people I’m more interested in are the strange ones (“gosh, really?” says anyone who got this far). Obviously, if you constantly want to be kept interested by something different, once you’ve got an idea of the middle ground, the further from that point people are the more fascinating they are to you. And it’s not just mentally different – I find physical abnormalities irresistible. This is made worse by the fact that people are generally embarrassed by them. So when I see people with odd markings on them I’m simultaneously drawn to them but have to spend half my time trying to avoid looking at them. Things that people find ugly about themselves I find alluring (although not in a sexual way – I don’t get aroused by strangeness, I’m just fascinated by it in the same way I’m fascinated by amazing rock formations, Giger artwork or Escheresque architecture.
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heh
Date: 2003-05-06 06:17 am (UTC)As far as deformities go ... I think it's easy to underestimate the social stigma of being *that* different.
I mean wouldn't a sixth finger be useful (assuming it's a well-formed one)? It certainly would help with playing guitar or using emacs. Meanwhile, cutting it off at birth seems par for the course.
So, a feature that you think is "cool" might be associated with torment in the mind of its possessor. As it is, teens go through anguish when they're "normal"; imagine the trauma of growing as a dwarf or the like. You'd need a phoenominal amount of self-confidence to be comfortable with the role of someone's fascination.
I'm just waking up, so this may sound very rambling ... let me end with a book recommendation:
Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist
He has a chapter about analyzing the elephant man's bones, and how he found it mystifying.
Re: heh
Date: 2003-05-06 06:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-06 07:54 am (UTC)I guess strange people could fall into either category.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-06 08:03 am (UTC)Strange people won't keep me for long if it's a simple strangeness - I'll "work it out" and wander off.
Hmm. New post coming up, I think.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-06 08:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-06 08:27 am (UTC)Ack! I just imagined one big circle-jerk!
Eww! Eww!
Re:
Date: 2003-05-06 08:33 am (UTC)I'm between Abi and Angelina
You're between Chris and Hendry
no subject
Date: 2003-05-06 08:51 am (UTC)Not me though - I was a bit outside a lot of it - whether it was my too many other interests or my extra age, I don't know. Oh, I got physically involved with a fair few Loungers, but also as many non-Loungers.
I suppose that I'm just not that interested in people - I was a bit more then but it was never my main interest.
The Lounge was definitely some weird colony organism though, I'll give you that.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-06 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-06 07:08 pm (UTC)Reading in the toilet is bad enough, but in the toilet on a bus? I'd rather get the deed done and get out of there... heh. or should there have been a comma?
I have much less of a need for books than I used to. Back during school, during endless hours of study-hall, etc., and during college in those hours between classes, reading was a good way to keep from going stir-crazy. But now that I don't have so much nothing-to-do-but-wait time, during the free time that I do have, as during lunch, often I am fine just sitting, relaxing, thinking, watching.... Sometimes I even need that time just to digest or process the previous events of the day. Occasionally I will still get a restless urge to read, but not that often.
And it’s not just mentally different – I find physical abnormalities irresistible.
There was a show on tv about Siamese twins. The one set of twins they were showing had basically one lower body (2 legs, 2 arms) but with 2 heads (2 hearts, 2 spines). Looking at them, it was truly like seeing a person with 2 heads. Yet, watching them, I was amazed at how normal they looked. Not like anything freakish, but something normal. They just happened to have one body with two heads.
darkoshi (http://users.ecoisp.com/shaku8/mir/)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-18 07:06 am (UTC)The main thing i actualy wanted to say was tha tthe entire last paragraph is something i myself do. THe problem i have is that i am always so worried that i will somehow hurt the other person or make them overly self conscious about the whole thing.