Sparked by Midelne
2003-05-01 � 8:12 a.m.

Mid quotes Michael Woodring Stover in his latest entry, saying that there is absolutely nothing as seductive as uncritical admiration. Midelne agrees.

I, however, do not. There is little that I find as frightening as undiluted devotion. Rather than seductive, I find it cloying and cannot but consider it to be maladjusted behavior.

An inability to see a person's flaws means an inability to see the person. Even focusing on someone's talent, or what might be perceived as their talent, means excluding the totality of that person from your judgment. It is wrong, and it scares me when people do that to me.

This should not be considered an indictment of Midelne or his recounted actions. Far be it for me to cast stones, being an ignorant fool. And I can surely see where this kind of behavior would be very attractive to most people. I am not most people. It is not just uncritical praise that frightens me, but any strong emotional outpouring. And but so.

I have been on the receiving end of such fierce admiration before. I can pinpoint the occasions in my memory with merely a flicker of thought, they stand out so plainly. Nearly every incident is redolent with regret and pain. Then again, so are most of my memories, but leave that for now.

Ms. M's mouth was, coincidentally enough, one of the most striking things about her to me � an astonishingly wide and expressive organ that served her well when she would turn her savage intelligence and wit upon some unlucky soul or subject. Hers was my first taste of devotion of the type Midelne brought up, and it terrified me from the moment it revealed itself to me. I was more than emotionally unstable at the time, and handled it poorly (of course). I'm not sure how else it could have turned out, but as it was it turned into a tale smeared over the course of years.

But even in the course of bungling the situation as badly as I did I learned several important things about people with that particular shine in their eyes...or maybe I just ended up more broken than before. I can't tell anymore.

Whichever the case, I shy away from persons like that now. It's good, sometimes, like when that fresh faced young lady approached me after my thesis reading with something glowing behind her countenance and I lied to her in a very patient way as I explained that I didn't believe a word of what I had just spent no few minutes vehemently spouting. The glow died and I never saw her again, but it was for the best, believe me.

Because they can't help but end up disappointed. The person they see, the composite they build inside that place your words or art touched in them out of their own hopes and the little bit of the real you that might filter through...that person will let them down, because that person doesn't exist, can't exist.

For once my own cynicism and self-loathing actually make logical sense.

In a way this has backfired on me, because I cannot feel that way about anyone anymore either. I used too, believe me. There were a few people that could do no fucking wrong in my book, were flat-out, hands-down, hair-on-fire amazing...and they still are, but they will forever be flawed in my eyes for the simple reason that they are flawed. Too, I tend to distrust the display of such in people even when it isn't directed at me. I find it more than a little ignorant, and it lessens my opinion of people.

I apologize for my tone...I've been reading too much Murakami.

-t

Currently Aurally Inducing: Basement Jaxx, Bingo Bango
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: "B-b-b-b-b-bingo bango!"

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