Confessions of a Fuck-Up Artist
Feb. 23rd, 2013 03:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonA few weeks back, in a rare moment of drunken insight at the Yacht, I told my buddy the difference between myself and our mutual friend: "It's like this - you believe he has courage but no honor. Which is why you like fucking him but can't bring yourself to trust him outside the bedroom. On the other hand, you believe I have honor but no courage. Which is why you trust me but have no attraction beyond that trust."
She smiled impressed and didn't deny it.
And it's alright. Because though the evidence backs the case, it's also dead wrong.
For one thing, there is honor even amongst thieves and our mutual friend displays his magnificently on the battlefield, even if rarely in oaths of the lover's heart sworn.
For another, I do have courage... believe it or not. It's right there in the roar that comes out wrong in a badly versed joke, it's stepping into a crowded room of people I don't know the way I step into a fight with a man twice my size, it's in each word I spill for a stranger's eye to judge sight unseen of the poor fool that wrote them.
But ages ago a different and very distant friend taught me a lesson in magick that a thousand hours poured over the Library Thelema couldn't teach me: "It's not who we are or what we've done," he'd laugh, "it's what we can convince people we can do that gives us the power to define ourselves."
Which is one of those pearls of wisdom my intelligence can swallow but my intuition chokes on.
I mean I try and I try and I try and each time I do I end up trying harder when even the act of trying at all is trying too hard.
It means I clank where I should click, I smile where I should nod, I nod where I should laugh, I laugh where I should be silent. A victim of some catastrophic teleportation accident that has left me perpetually a few crucial seconds out of synch with the rest of the world I'm desperately trying to reach.
So there's the struggle, the time out of joint and me without a time without a joint. A fool in knight's armor, blinded by a helmet too big for his ego and grasping at the courage right in front of his face.
She smiled impressed and didn't deny it.
And it's alright. Because though the evidence backs the case, it's also dead wrong.
For one thing, there is honor even amongst thieves and our mutual friend displays his magnificently on the battlefield, even if rarely in oaths of the lover's heart sworn.
For another, I do have courage... believe it or not. It's right there in the roar that comes out wrong in a badly versed joke, it's stepping into a crowded room of people I don't know the way I step into a fight with a man twice my size, it's in each word I spill for a stranger's eye to judge sight unseen of the poor fool that wrote them.
But ages ago a different and very distant friend taught me a lesson in magick that a thousand hours poured over the Library Thelema couldn't teach me: "It's not who we are or what we've done," he'd laugh, "it's what we can convince people we can do that gives us the power to define ourselves."
Which is one of those pearls of wisdom my intelligence can swallow but my intuition chokes on.
I mean I try and I try and I try and each time I do I end up trying harder when even the act of trying at all is trying too hard.
It means I clank where I should click, I smile where I should nod, I nod where I should laugh, I laugh where I should be silent. A victim of some catastrophic teleportation accident that has left me perpetually a few crucial seconds out of synch with the rest of the world I'm desperately trying to reach.
So there's the struggle, the time out of joint and me without a time without a joint. A fool in knight's armor, blinded by a helmet too big for his ego and grasping at the courage right in front of his face.