(Warning: some knowledge of historical leprosy might be useful. Not much; I sure as hell don't know much, but there is a mild amount of comparison to historical leprosy.)
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Bah.
I hate human nature.
I really do. I hate it. And it seems there's no way to completely escape it.
No, this is not going to be one of my supremacist rants. My current thoughts are "We're no better than the rest of them." Or... not that much, anyway.
I spend so much time wanting to know, Why do the "normal people" choose that life? How can they stand it? We seem to generally assume that they've been brainwashed into it, and by that opinion I still stand, but... is it any wonder that they don't come and join us? I mean, if the leprous population of each village was such a happy, open, warm, loving community, then we could ask, What's wrong with the people who don't want this? They must be blind! However, we're not exactly the happiest bunch out there--in fact, we're often uber-angsty, especially around other people--we have our problems and we just project them. All the world can see how much time we spend bitching about everything. As uber-frightening wierd-ass acting teacher Judy said, the level of cynicism is *astounding*. When the acting class (all at least semi-leprous peoples, with [oddly enough] the least leprous people being the quietest) sat around happily chatting with each other, we still spent most of it poking fun at people and being bitter and morbid. We seem to separate good times from bad in terms of whether we're having fun being bitter and morbid or are just being bitter and morbid. We probably don't come off as very welcoming.
There are also frighteningly many similarites between lepers everywhere. From being bitter about humanity to poking, things have shown up apparently independently in various groups of lepers I've talked to from here to Holland (Email conversation with Elvea: "We poke a lot over here..." "We poke too! That's so cool!" "D'you play 'Pass the Poke'?" "No, I don't think so... how d'you play?" and on from there). I'm not sure what that signifies, but it's got me going o.O. We're not really all that massively different; in many cases we're just the predictable opposite of what's normal. In many cases, what is normal is bad and therefore the predictable opposite is good; however, sometime's it's just stupid but we fuss about it anyway.
The more I think about it, the more perfect the term "leper" seems to me to be. We're not that few in number. We're a minority, and a scorned one, but every village has its population of lepers, kept apart from the rest of society. They're seen as a constant in normal life. The Bible constantly mentions lepers and leprosy. And anyone can get leprosy, but nobody wants to. The only difference is that we'd rather like to spread leprosy, and we hold ourselves apart. By now, we've congealed, and formed a very tight group, open and willing to meet the lepers of other villages, but not interacting with the "healthy" portion of any (that word being in quotes because in this case, leprosy isn't a disease, it's a lack of disease, because we're all really prideful by now). Oh, and lepers would carry bells or somesuch so that others knew how to keep out of the way. We don't literally carry bells, but we have our bells, in our clothes and our general demeanors and, occasionally, the overtly strange things we do.
And, while we don't try to conform to each other, I've noticed that we all pick things up from various other people. Usually they're small things, sometimes really small things, and I don't think they impact who we are. But we do continually pick mannerisms up from each other, without noticing it 'til later, sometimes when we don't want that mannerism. At one point, I started fingercombing my hair the same way Matt does, and didn't realize I was doing it until I decided it was distinctly uncomfortable, too close to having my hair tied up or back. Eddy seemed to get rather irritated with herself when she noticed that, while she'd picked up drinking as much soda as she was from Britt, she'd picked up the manner of holding it from Ben. (Despite how much she dislikes him, I'm not surprised. Ben has intensely cool mannerisms.) Not sure where that thought was leading, if it was leading anywhere. I think it was just an observation.
Erm... end rant.
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Spiffy poem, HTML-ed to excess. Closely following the way Suzine posted it on the PPC board.
Call the doctors call the nurses
Give me a breath of air
I've been reading all your stories but the periods aren't there
Call the policeman
Call the traffic guards
Give me a STOP sign quick
Call the commas
Call the question marks
Give me a single clue
Tell me where to breathe with a punctuation mark or two
'Twas posted with the note "For anyone who's interested, this little poem is 'Call the Periods, Call the Commas' by Kallie Dakos. It should be force-fed to Suvians."
-Claudia
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