Post-Camelot

[osprey_archer]

So I've been meaning to respond to the comments on Camelot. There's this pattern where I stay up too late at night, post something overly emotionally revealing, and then wake up the next morning and go "OMG WTF I JUST USED UP MY EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY QUOTIENT FOR THE MONTH WHAT WAS I THINKING?"

And then it's difficult to respond to comments.

Possibly I need to get to sleep earlier.

Comments

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

*g* It's still great to have you around anyway.

A lot of my response was fuelled by reading Irvin Yalom's books. I don't have a good recommendation of where to start with him, but he has a lot to say about existential aloneness and how we matter to other people.

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

Sleep? What is this 'sleep' of which you speak?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Whatever else it is, it's clearly overrated. :p

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

No worries, no worries! You gave us all a chance to think about what loneliness is to us, too.

... But I know what you mean about feeling like you've said or revealed too much--or rather, /I've/ sometimes felt like that, too. Then I put up like six different posts to try to push that one post down, down, and out of my friends scrolls :-)

I haven't yet commented on your Best Male Buddies entry on Sutcliff, but I liked it a lot, and it got me thinking a lot about friendship v. romantic relationships and how fluid that line is, quite regardless of sexual orientation. Really intense friendships have a quality of romance--at least, so I've found--even quite absent any sexual attraction.

... and this feeds into thoughts I've had about the article I linked to a couple of entries back on LJ, about the young women poets in Afghanistan. ... Annnnd... this is a big digression here.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, the posting spree. Not only does it push the offending post out of friends' scrolls, but hopefully out of their minds as well!

I agree that there's a lot of emotional overlap between friendship and romance. I think one of the difficulties for modern people is that we yearn for that kind of relationship - hence the popularity of buddy movies, for instance - but at the same time, a lot of people want friendship to be easy, to be (almost) always fun and not to demand much of them.

There's nothing wrong with friendships like that, but it limits the depths a friendship can reach. Intense experiences demand a lot. And are we really friends with someone if we wouldn't go the extra mile to help them if they needed it?

Have you read any of Sutcliff's books? She has some issues (there aren't a lot of women in her stories), but she's very good at evoking a sense of period and place as well as friendship.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I read some of her books ages and ages ago--I mean, when I was really quite little--and I think I was a little *too* little for them. My general memory is of working diligently through them in the manner in which you struggle up a mountainside. I think a lot of the historical verisimilitude was lost on me at the time.

I've enjoyed reading adult people's readings and rereadings of them, though--especially yours.