From: ?
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 4:47
To: Carolyn L Burke
Subject: movie
Greetings Carolyn
Its' Nedra. I tried sending you this letter once already and think I
fucked up, so I hope this isn't going to be redundant.
Would you like to go for a movie with me tomorrow afternoon, if you are
not doing anything earth-shatteringly important ? I've been wanting to
see this movie called Eldorado, but the choice of movie is open to input
from you. There seems to be a reasonable lot of interesting stuff out
right now, so I'm sure we could find something we'd agree on?
What say'st thou?
Contrary to popular opinion I am not a great extrovert, so if you choose
to decline - the possibility has occured to me, yes - could you do so
keeping in mind the fact that such overtures do not come easily to me?
You don't have to be nice or anything,just - as a favour - don't drop a
piano on my head, okay?
--
Peter Fruchter, LL.B., M.A. Finger for additional information
fruchter@julian.uwo.ca
fruchter@nexus.yorku.ca
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From: Carolyn L Burke
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 10:35
To: ?
Subject: movie
Dear ,
A couple of things. I'm afraid I will sound rather mean in spite of your request. Essentially, because of your shyness I suppose, you transgress boundaries rather extensively. For instance, I live inthis electronic world apporximately half of my waking hours. I know many people this way. One of the most important characteristics of maintaining such a wolrd is the use of one's own identity in speaking with others. Clearly you do not have an electronic identity -- an email account of our own. And I realize thatyou probably do not use email often enough to make it worth your while to pay the $15 / month that it costs (like it wasn't worth your while to get your own phone line - or your own TV it seems).
For a change, you have not co-opted something that was once both mine and Peter's and have instead share something that was only his - his email account. So I have no say in it other than in my response to you BOTH. Perhaps the two of you could ask to change the account to read Peter and . This would give fair warning to those who may have otherwise expected to read mail from the publicized author -- namely Peter Fruchter.
Since I think that there are no such things as excuses, I instead take your explanation of why I should not reply harshly and use it to try to understand why you breach boundaries such as the one I have just mentioned. Like Peter's habit of breaking people's contexts open, perhaps you too have developed a way to engage in human intercourse without using hte established channels. Alright. That's fair enough. But how far will you go? I have moved out of my home. out of fairness, I did not take all of the shared objects, nor did I only take the good ones. I added in a roommate to cover my expenses without animousity towards you guys, something which I was very tempted to do nevertheless. I am sure my behaviuor has not been taken as in any way generous -- only Peter gets credit for that inall probability. Unfortunately you sleep ona bed that was his and mine once Joe left it. you use furniture that was and still is mine. Etc. And I see that there is no gratitude -- only twitchy attempts to pretend that I would benefit in some way by spending time letting you cross over more boundaries.
I thought that I had made it clear that my electronic universe was to be left alone. Why is this unclear? Last time you sent a note to me, I tried to be polite about it, but I was also trying to indicate that " you got the fucking house, lay off on the the few bits of my life that I have left."
You have been influenced by Peter (as everyone he has ever known has been) to try to meet the people he talks about. The pressure is always on me from him to do the same. I have told him over the years to lay off.. He tries his best but it is completely unnatural for that smelly nature worshipper to really let go of his commune styole inter-relating (which interestingly enough seems to exclude Aaron -- making me think he is rather a large hypocrite).
I have plans with my friends this afternoon - Tuesday. Since however you mentioned tomorrow afternoon, and you worte a 4:47 in the morning of Tuesday, I assume you might have meant Wednesday. Well boys and girls, I WORK. Perhaps you don't understand where themoney you ar living off of comes from.
Leave me alone. The only interest you have to me is as an influence - a positive one - on the man I love. As a person you ar not of interest to me, regardless of your qualities. Am I clear enough here???? Leave me alone. I moved out to be left alone. I will fucking leave the country rather than be continusouly harrassed by you. In fact, I will have a court order made up to stop you from doing this if you do not stop approaching yourself. Is that clear enough? No?
As for our suggestion of seeing a movie. I don't get it. Are we supposed to bond by osmosis during a movie? How is that supposed to do anything. I eat and see movies only ever with friends or by myself. Since I now live by myself thanks to your boundary crossings, I think I'll just choose to eat and see movies that way too.
I don't think you understand yet exactly how angry and hurt I am. DO YOU GET IT? I lived with Peter for 10 YEARS!!! And now I don't. You do? Don't you have any sense of decency??
Yesterday I asked you how you were doing, and you replied in the most cowardly of ways, you told me the whole plot of a play you had just finished reading -- no connection whatsoever to anything to do with how you were doing. I had to assume that you had enjoyed the play and hence were feeling good. The alternatives were: clammed up repressed person living in fear, manipulator who can't work in front of two people at the same time, idiot who couldn't understand the simple question, happy person who was happy because she read a play about rhinocerii. I think I'm starting to doubt having chosen the latter.
Don't bother me again with bullshit.
Carolyn
ps I never do anything of earth shattering importance. I do work hard. Perhaps you could take a lesson. This was a violin by the way. Don't break it.
pps In your new mate's asshole way of scoring worth, you get a point for having approached, I lose a point for not being open and reaching across boundaries in return, and I lose quite a number of points for burning the bridge more permanently. Keep fucking him -- leave me out of it.
Dear Peter,
Please keep your creature in line as you promised.
Yours,
Carolyn
--
_________________________________________________________ clb ___
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From: Richard
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 11:23
To: Carolyn L Burke
Subject: movie
Well, N is a member of a certain conventional and ordinary socio-psychological type: a "nice person". Like all nice people, she has an utterly *unshakable* belief that
*if a behaviour falls under the nice-person conventions, then it is morally good*
I.e. being a nice person always involves caring about moral goodness, plus an iron-bound belief that niceness and moral goodness are exactly the same.
This is what you've been running into with her. The nice-person conventions call for being friendly, for smiling no matter what, for turning the other cheek, and blah blah blah; and that's what she thinks she's been doing all along (she isn't very "nice" when her depth-psych makes her act like a nasty little bitch, but she's not aware of those times, or even of their possible existence, so they can't enter into her moral reckoning).
Of course, the nice-person conventions *don't* call for taking any account of differences between individuals; or caring about privacy; or placing any value on ways of being that are not very "nice". The standard the nice-person conventions embody is all about a universal way of treating everybody the same, which is taken to be *the* recipe for moral good in the world.
So, she thinks she's been "nice" to you all along, which is the *same* for her as being morally good; and therefore she is completely incapable of believing that she has acted wrongly or badly (those are the categories that are important to her) in any way.
At most, she'll be able to believe that if a recipient of her niceness doesn't respond *nicely* to it (which is what nice-personism is meant to elicit), then that person is hurting so much that they can't even accept what is obviously good. Failing that, she'll conclude that the recipient who refuses her niceness is *evil* (nice people also always believe in evil: not just moral badness, but a fearsome, aggressive, *threatening* moral badness).
So she's got a closed moral scheme, in which you can be counted as nice (if you smile at her and generally treat her like a puppy), or as nice but hurting a lot and therefore an *obligatory* recipient of *more and more* niceness until you feel "better" and start acting nice (which is her current opinion, I think); or as evil.
That's the pinball machine in question... it's up to you to play it.
BTW, if you care to put these blatherings in the diary, I'd rather enjoy it...
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From: Aaron Weiss
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 1995 16:48
To: Carolyn L Burke
Subject: bridges
What you've had to go through, and to whatever degree continue to, is to me unimaginably difficult. Regardless of how you might castigate yourself, I do want you to know that I think you've managed everything quite ... humanly. After all, I think that's the most that can be expected from anyone, at any time, in any situation.
It's common "wisdom" to say that, "people don't change." Other people insist that someone can change. But, I think both are misfocused on the issues people apply them. The question isn't whether individuals can "change," but patterns -- patterns of behavior, patterns of interlocking dynamics. Those aren't rooted in any one individual or another, but are some sort of "gestalt-ian" whole emerging from all interactions. Unfortunately, in my experience -- limited as though it may be on this planet -- I've yet or rarely to see these patterns change once established. I could hypothesize reasons why this might be, but I don't think that's relevant now -- too much of an intellectual aside.
Unfortunately, this leaves people with very extreme, and thus very difficult, decisions. After all, wherever there was a relationship, there was something there. To abandon its entirety is to abdandon the good things, too. I'm not saying anything revelatory there, I'm sure. This is, though, obviously a problem. It's probably one of the reasons some people exhibit break-up/get-back-together pattern behavior. Alas, I can't say that this works.
So, for whatever this third-party voice is worth, I do continue to offer my support for the path you are making your way down. You are definitely going the right way -- too bad "the right way" has so many dimensions of suckiness to it, huh? Seems counterintuitive, but, as with causality, I'm not sure intuitiveness-as-common-sense is much of a role-player in the universe. Being alone definitely has its downsides, and a lot of people believe hold the rationalization that it makes one stronger in the end. Thus, it's sometimes "good to be alone." I'm not convinced that's true. However, whether or not it's good, it _is_ sometimes necessary, and it is from that which one might as well derive whatever growth out of it that they can.
Well, these are just my opinions, something I have too many of. But I really don't think you're being evil has anything to do with it one way or another (not that I'm confirming that quality! :-). As I said, you're being human is what it's about (do the hokey pokey) and you are just that. And that's a good thing.
-Aaron,
who's also going to be human and get some food.