Right now, I'm in the middle of Rupert Thomson's Divided Kingdom. It's an absolutely fascinating book, as it combines a whole bunch of things I'm interested in--politics, psychology, and futuristic outlooks on our way of life. I had a really bad time trying to find it, and I was about to give up on it and order it online before I found it in Half Moon Bay.
In short, Divided Kingdom is set in future Great Britain, where the powers that be have decided to create a government and a law according to the four temperaments that describe the basic human condition. These four temperaments are associated with the biles, or four humours of the human body, and they are:
- Blood (of a sanguine nature)
- Yellow Bile (of a choleric nature)
- Black Bile (of a melancholy nature), and
- Phlegm (of a...well, phglematic nature--more on this in a minute)
Now, onto an explanation of these humours (if you are a psychologist, or a doctor, you can skip this section, as it is a simple, brief explanation to the general public):
A person with sanguine nature is granted upperclass status in Divided Kingdom, they are considered "normal" people. Sanguines generally are fun-loving, confident, cheerful, and optimistic. They are very easy to get along with.
A person with excessive choler is energetic. They are easily angered, but a choler tends to thrive on actions, an cholers also make great leaders or commanders. They are also dominant of other personalities.
A person with excessive black bile is melancholy...this isn't to say that they are lethargic, but it is to say that they are emotional--"melancholies" make great poets and artists, and while they aren't physically active, they experience moods and emotions on a greater scale than a person with excessive amounts of any other humour.
A phlegmatic is calm, and unemotional, pretty much everything that choler and "melancholer" are not. Associate phlegmatics with water. Like sanguines, they also have many friends, but they are instead more relaxed.
If you want a really dumbed-down way to look at the four humours, associate them with the seasons...sanguine for spring (think optimism, blossoming, happiness, etc.), choler for summer (heat, active, high temper) melancholy for fall (transition, emotion, experience) and phlegmatics with winter (stationary, dead, cold).
Divided Kingdom not only helps us understand the problems with people being catagorized, but also helps us understand what each of the four humours are. The people in the Yellow Quarter often hold riots against the new regime, whereas the people in the Green Quarter often commit suicide over it. Everyone tries to sneak into the Red Quarter, whereas the Blue Quarter holds a mysterious quality to it. The book itself tells the story of a young man who remembers (faintly) what life was like before the "Rearrangement" (the name they give to the process of divying everyone up) and his trials of fitting in to the new life. What's very strange, and interesting, is that so far, the main character has not protested this "Rearrangement" directly, but the book has a subtle way of pointing out that this system is in fact, flawed--people are spied upon, and it rests on upon the people to report any characteristics that are incompatible with the quarter that person may be living in (i.e., a person in the Red Quarter exhibits violence, they get reported and are deported to the Yellow Quarter).
Now, think of all the people you know, or at least the ones close to you. I'm almost positive that you can (and most likely will) begin to label them with each of these temperaments. You may even come to the point where you can label yourself as being red, yellow, green, or blue. But amidst all this labelling, you must realize that not all people exhibit characteristics that are completely consistent with one temperament, all the time.
Myself, I like to think of myself as white (It seems as there's a special class reserved for the government officials and the like). But don't read this the wrong way--it's not that I don't fit into any cateory, or that I protest categorization, it's that I fit equally into all categories. I am good natured, hotheaded, inspired, and completely cold in equal amounts. I'm a leader, an administrator, a friend, and I even write poetry, every day. It's an interesting psychological puzzle--how would you label yourself? How would you label others? How do you think that others would label you?
In reality, though, I'm probably just sanguine, blood red as the rest of them. Bo-ring.
Rupert Thomson's Divided Kingdom. Pick it up.
She spoke to me again today.
While I will never, ever let up on who exactly she is, as I know that would breach my commitment to never, ever make this journal personal, I will tell you that she is very beautiful, and that we deserve each other, etc. I was actually wondering how long it would take me to get to this particular entry.
Perhaps it is infatuation, perhaps it is something more. I've long been a supporter of not calling anything a relationship unless it is serious, that is, a relationship is only a relationship to a degree. I do believe that that loving multiple people is possible, which throws out a theory of there being a "one true love." Some might consider this notion sick and perverted, others may call it human nature. I personally believe that the love is like a plant--the amount of time you spend nurturing it and caring for it (or the other person for that matter) is directly proportional to the size of the love in question, that is, the more you practice at it, the more passionate the love will be. Love grows, and there is a basic love for every other person on this earth by every other person on this earth,
And of course, it becomes obvious from this entry that this may be the result of a hormonal, adolescent phase, and the problems with that theory include: a) I can actually diagnose myself, and admit that it might be just like an addiction, and as far as I know I've been able to control it, and b) I'm 18 and a half. So this theory might not be altogether true.
Often times seniors in high school will enter relationships with juniors or other "underclassmen." I believe this to be a lie: these are simply friendships with a high degree of infatuation for the other person. Both know, even if it is subconsciously, that the senior must move away, to college, and must make something of his/her self.
So in this sense, why bother entering into a "relationship" with someone until you are out of college, when you can support yourself and you probably aren't going anywhere for an amount of time? If you are a senior/junior who is involved with someone else, ask yourself this: what will you do when the other person must leave? Will you do everything in your power to be with him/her again? Will you wait it out in hopes that your love will be faithful? Or will you move on, admitting to yourself that my theory of love-growth is true, and that it is possible to love more than one person? And if it's a yes to that last question, am I really that insane, or outrageous with these theories?
I'm not trying to scorn love, because everyone who scorns love is criticized: those who have never been in love are criticized for not knowing what it's like, and those who have been in love many times are criticized for being jaded, for getting the short straw. Instead, I'm trying to point out some of the flaws of making "relationships"--things that aren't really what they are called, calling things that aren't really what they are.
So I encourage you to think before entering into a relationship. I don't want to debunk everything I just said by saying, "oh, well you can never really know for sure," but just be careful in choosing the person you want to work with at love. It may sound cold, describing love as mechanical work, requiring its participants to strive for the highest level of love, but I beg of you to think of it as something natural--think of your love as a flower, or better yet a tree. It is, after all, human nature to love.
I was walking home from work yesterday when I ran into an old black lady also waiting for the bus. At first I thought she was crazy, but after chatting with her for a while, I drew that she wasn't crazy, but mostly angry because she had missed the bus, after screaming at the driver who refused to slow down for her. I've had this happen to me a couple of times, and it IS infuriating.
We talked for a while, and eventually it started to rain, so I let her use part of my (huge) umbrella. Well, I thought, at least I will not stoop to the indecency of MUNI bus drivers. We talked from hair, to kids, to all sorts of things, and I actually listened to her. I'm normally afraid of people I meet on the street, but not, for some reason, in this case. This woman had a wisdom about her, and she had grown up in San Francisco near the Haight-Ashbury, where I live, during the summer of love.
She struck me with this statement: "Don't have kids until you don't have anything else to do."
Which to me, is weird. Looking at history we can say that there was a time in America where there was a push for women to churn out babies like a machine. Nowadays, it seems like the idea of having children is just a waste of time and resources. Having children? Are you insane? Of course, I'm not planning to have children at my age, that would be stupid, but I probably won't decide to have kids ever. Not when I'm 25, not when I'm 30, not when I'm any age at all.
There's also the global problem. We are running out of resources as it is. Pollution and global warming are just a few things that are damaging the earth we live on. So having kids? Probably not a good idea anyway. Who would want them to suffer? But this is simply unrealistic: we must procreate in order to create. We have a constant will to be remembered, or else we are nothing. Which simply means this: we need to start worrying about the place we live, right now.
Perhaps this is an extravagant response to a simple chat with an old lady, but it was certainly thought-provoking.
As much as I'd like to say that everyone was a celebrity, I would like to share with you a little piece that I came up with:
It's best if our imaginations were a product of ourselves, rather than ourselves being a product of our imaginations.
It's probably better to dream that you were such a celebrity rather than be one, but I wouldn't know.
Anyways, yes, I've actually had a couple of run-ins with Robin Williams--he lives in San Francisco with his daughter, and was at Herb Caen's funeral. He's actually a pretty nice guy, come to think of it. It's funny because I don't really remember exactly what we said, but thinking, "Wow, I'm talking with Robin Williams, and, wow, he's just like another guy."
What I mean is, I don't think any celebrity IS a celebrity. They're all just people, like us, only they get seen more often than we do. We, the silent, background people probably have just as much talent and just as much going on. It just never gets publicized.
