posted October 20, 2007 08:58 PM         

Do you think people talk to much about themselves and its really annoying?

Do you find them to be fake and phony for the most part, and do you prefer the solace of social isolation?

If that's the case, post your experiences here.

posted October 20, 2007 09:13 PM         

Hermit here.

'Love humanity, hate humans... well, not really, but they are a handful.

I am the only person I know that I can stand for long stretches of time, but who knows... maybe if there was an alternative, I would avoid myself too, but since it's me, myself and I, and no other... that will have to do.

People are like animals... great from a distance, like on television (National Geographics) but a health hazard in close range.

So, rather the devil I know (moi)...

Other people are thus incorporated into my life for entertainment, recreation and study. When it comes to serious things though, such as peace of mind, I rely and prefer myself to get the job done.

posted October 20, 2007 09:14 PM         

(intrOverted)

posted October 20, 2007 09:30 PM         

I've been guilty many times of saying too much,
especially about myself.

That Jupiter in Leo,
in hard aspect to Sun and Moon,
and trine Mars/Merc in Sag...

(See, there I go again.)

I think I'm fairly complex and changeable.
I can be extremely open and outgoing,
and extremely reserved.
Whatever I am, I tend toward the extremes.

Balance, for me,
consists not in moderation,
but in compensation.

I project a more extraverted personae on the net.

In "real life" I tend to be quiet, reflective, a good listener.

I spend almost all of my time alone.

When I want company,
"real life" company,
I go hang out with my best friend,
who is similarly inclined.

He's about the only person I really relate to,
and, even then, there is a lot to be desired.

Yes, most people strike me as phony and shallow,
and the vast majority of "conversation" to be had
is ridiculously empty and pointless,
in my less-than-humble opinion.

The stupid, obvious things that people find funny...
The stupid, obvious things that make them go "hmmm"...
The stupid, tasteless things that people find beautiful...
Make me want to crawl under a rock and die.

No sir,
Not for me was this world made.

posted October 20, 2007 09:34 PM         

People are so terribly average. But really find themselves quite wonderful don't they?

I have a lot of friends but I secretly hate most of them.

posted October 20, 2007 09:35 PM         

I swear,
I'm not one of those soulless critics
who correct people's spelling
and overlook the essence of what they have to say.

posted October 20, 2007 09:36 PM         

If this pluto conj sun transit is showing me what its like to be a scorpio, then I have more compassion than before for scorpios.

And yes jupiter sq sun is quite harsh, extremes indeed.

posted October 20, 2007 09:45 PM         

Red Sox...

More like Red Light!

*screeching brakes*
*peeling out*
*trail of dust*
"See ya! Wouldnt wanna know ya!"

God, I love being honest,
but I dont want to hurt anybody's feelings.

Do you think its true
that average people dont care that they are average?
and stupid people are too stupid to care (or even know) how stupid they are?
That most people would rather be lost in a crowd,
than head of the class?

After all,
they have no trouble finding a cozy little echo chamber
full of people just as stupid and average as they are,
to pat them on the back and encourage their mediocrity.

And people like us?

We are just "snobs", "elitists", and "weirdos".

That makes it easy to dismiss anyone with uncommonly high standards, I guess.

But its true,... I can be a curmudgeon.

Sometimes nothing is "good enough".

"I can't help but be restless
when everything is so tasteless!
and all the colors seem to have
faded away....
Oh, This is Life.
This is life, and everything's alright.
Livin', livin', livin', livin' life."

~ Daniel Johnston

posted October 20, 2007 09:46 PM         

LOL...

People think it's an old wive's tale that, "Silence is golden"...

posted October 20, 2007 09:48 PM         

("Silence is pilgrimage.")

~ The Philokalia

posted October 20, 2007 09:51 PM         

I think even a stupid person can be taught to think outside the box, perhaps the system is to blame.

I've been called snobby and weird. It's not my fault that most people are pedestrian, limited, and just an utter bore. I don't point it out though, to their faces.

posted October 20, 2007 10:00 PM         

quote:

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If this pluto conj sun transit is showing me what its like to be a scorpio, then I have more compassion than before for scorpios.

---

Thanks. Yep, it sounds like you are getting the Scorpio experience alright.

quote:

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It seems to me a lot of brilliant people are hermits.

---

Schopenhauer said something about how, when an intelligent man enters society, he feels like a talented dancer who has arrived at a ball only to find that all the people he might dance with are crippled.

And yes, the theme of loneliness is quite common in classical literature. It has been said so many times, in so many ways, by so many brilliant men and women - that brilliance is a curse. One stands atop a mountain and sees farther than others... but one stands alone. Only in the valleys is it possible to stand shoulder to shoulder.

"It's lonely at the top."

posted October 20, 2007 10:01 PM         

I was thinking about that.

Make that Cap rising square Pluto for me (and you).

posted October 20, 2007 10:02 PM         

quote:

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I'm told my hermit like ways are not normal or healthy.
Those are the people I like to poke in the eye with my cane.

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posted October 20, 2007 10:06 PM         

Many of the criticisms of Callas can strike one as odd in a way, as if they convey a biting, very personal edge: it is as if the critic is offended deep in his soul, for a reason he thinks you already know, but which he would prefer not to identify. In fact, it's not so mysterious: many people will acknowledge Callas's greatness. But they cannot forgive Callas for one reason above all others: Callas was great, and she knew it. In a culture drowning in mediocrity, one which idolizes the mundane, the commonplace, and often even the repellent, and turns people we would not care to know in our own lives into instant celebrities who are forgotten the next week, true greatness makes us profoundly uncomfortable. We don't know how to relate to it, and we think it reflects badly on us. Callas herself was wonderfully clear about the standards she would prefer to be employed: "I am not an angel and do not pretend to be. That is not one of my roles. But I am not the devil either. I am a woman and a serious artist, and I would like so to be judged."

Many of us will permit Callas her greatness, provided she is humble about it. Genuine greatness cannot be humble in this way, simply to make mediocrity comfortable: to do so makes the achievement impossible. The extraordinary would become ordinary once more. Callas would have none of that; she sought to transcend the standards others had unthinkingly accepted, standards low enough that others could be assured of meeting them. She insisted on the absolute best from herself; when she could not meet her own standards, her failure tormented her. And she insisted on the best from her listeners; when we failed, as many of us did, we blamed her for making us aware of our own limitations.

Callas's art was the purest embodiment of that aspiration, and she provided that kind of exultation: she made the human divine. She remained fully and tragically human, but infused with the goddess. She demanded that we raise ourselves up, to meet her on that exalted plane. If we couldn't or wouldn't, we laid the blame at her feet, rather than confront our own failings.

Many of us recoil at the sight of genuine greatness: we seek to minimize it, find fault with it, or diminish it. If actual faults present themselves, we seize on them with an eagerness that is both revealing and deplorable. If those faults are not enough, we invent others. If through one of those infrequent miracles that grace our existence, another Callas were to come upon the scene today, I very much doubt she would survive for long -- and if she did, I hate to think what the cost would be.

But greatness of this kind cannot be denied in the end. Decades from now, and even in hundreds of years, Callas's art will be remembered by those who search history for the greatest of achievements, and who treasure and guard them as the most precious of rare gems. She will live, when we have been long forgotten. At the opening of his valuable book, The Callas Legacy, John Ardoin, an unusually perceptive commentator, offers the lines from Edna St. Vincent Millay that many think of in connection with Callas's life:

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light.

More and more, I am led to the conclusion that the brightest and fiercest flames last the shortest time, in every field of human endeavor. Perhaps the failing is ours -- in the comfort we seek from the mediocre and that which does not require us to raise ourselves up, and in our resistance to those achievements that transcend the boundaries of what we view as even possible. Or perhaps the brevity is inherent in the achievement itself: when we break the bounds of what most humans are capable of doing, the person who does so cannot tolerate the impossible strain for very long. Yet they cannot strive for less: that, too, would destroy them.

Whatever the explanation may be, such greatness is eternal. It will last as long as mankind does, and as long as we remember what is possible when we strive for perfection, and approach as near to it as we can. Perhaps, finally, that makes the terrible costs that Callas endured worth it in the end: that she will live forever.

For you, truly and incomparably La Divina: now and always.

posted October 20, 2007 10:10 PM         

quote:

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I think even a stupid person can be taught to think outside the box,
perhaps the system is to blame.

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Don't you mean, "outside the box seats"?

I agree, it may be the system.

Then again...
give a stupid person a choice,
and they'll probably pick the box any day of the week.

quote:

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I"ve even found highly intelligent people to be completely boring and useless, droning endlessly in a pedantic style that makes me want to claw my eyes out.

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Hey! I resemble that!