askandanswer | (no subject)

[ Mundane perceptiveness is bad enough. Nate has been very attentive to how he comes off in his day to day life, but less mindful about more personal encounters, something which recently got him into trouble. This time, he's set on doing better. ]

I'm easily swayed, by others as much as myself. I think it's fair to be cautious about that. But maybe that's not something you're as concerned about.

[ Fabian seems like he'd be unmovable, anyway. He's an artist! Artists have Opinions and Vision. Things like that. ]

A doctor [ the tone, even keeled and calm, speaks a certain amount of interest. Long ago, the practice was very different. While medicine grew and evolved, he lost his interest. Although you could say many of his practices still fall beneath medicinal. Alternative, they'd say. Hoax others might claim. ]

Now these words you speak [ His hand gestures are fluid, loose, flowing. They follow his overall demeanor of calm and graceful. ] True wisdom if ever I did hear it.

It seems so... [ He breaks, and starts again. It's not that his English is poor but sometimes when engaged in conversation it's a little more difficult to put it together than in his native tongue. ] Youth as of late, I find, cannot even begin to sort their emotional field.

[ there's a short laugh ] Not as if that is uncommon to youth of all generations, but more is the reaction of adults to this phenomenon. Either black or white- you're special and hidden from emotional pain - which inspires growth or you're weak for being emotional and told to hide it which inevitably does the same thing.

What kind of people are we building when the root of what a human is, is abandoned?

Edited 2014-09-30 13:51 (UTC)

I long to be swayed. Consequences will fall on to me when they do and then I will reflect and think 'I am such an idiot' after the fact. [ He lets a small smile come to his lips and paints a small idle design on the table top with a finger ]

My life will be a disaster but look at the art that came from it.

You mentioned marketing last time we spoke. Is this your strength?

[ She has sound reason in her own way. He would dare to say that many people function this way. Merely some are more subtle about it. Yet he'll let her finish her bombardment of questions and statements before addressing any of them. ]

And yet people still partake. A reflection of character, no doubt. [ the easily persuaded mind believes what the world tells them and never questions why or simply says 'that's not me'. ]

Isn't Halloween coming up? Perhaps I'm practicing. [ A beat ] And what is it that you do, fine stranger?

[ Nate makes an amused sound as he drinks again, though it really is not amusing. Chalk it up to a combination of going with the joke and inappropriate detachment. ]

So that's what you mean by not looking for inspiration.

And no, I'm on the research end of it. I'm afraid I don't have the techniques to sway you.

[ It's amusing. You'd think after 300 years someone might learn from their mistakes on reckless abandon. A fool is always a fool, they say. Well, he's a might bit more cautious of malpractice at least. As for the desire to be swept into some fantastical nonsense, he suspects that will never fade. Artist, after all. ]

Likely not. [ He pours another small glass of snaps and pushes the plate of meat forward ] Pace yourself, älskling. There's no hurry, is there?

[ Between Fabian's ancient history and his recent, Nate would only be able to utter the deadest of laughs. Fortunately, such matters are still behind their respective curtains.

His gaze skitters away from the meat at first, but if it seems for that second that he might be a vegetarian adherent of "do no harm," Nate loses further credibility with the new age crowd by taking a piece. ]

This is me taking it easy. But thanks. Do I want to know what 'älskling' means?

[ His pronunciation is a precise imitation of Fabian's, which might sound entertaining coming out of his mouth. ]

[ And hopefully they remain so. Skeptics look at him as a homeopathic nutcase. Artists look at him as an uncouth waste of talent. Everything is in balance with the world. ]

That depends on which way your sexual pendulum sways. [ he says calm as always and parts his eyes from Nate toward the bar with an amused curl on his lips. It was an atrocious attempt at Swedish but then again every word Fabian says is likely an atrocious attempt at English regardless show fluent he is. ]

[ The unexpectedness of that answer gets a laugh that has one foot in deadened territory, but on the other hand, it is also genuinely entertained. Not something he meant to do, but Fabian startled it out of him before he could put something more appropriate together. ]

Oh, maybe I do have the techniques.

[ He drinks again, easy about it, then sets about detaching bite-sized portions from the piece he took. ]

I'm going to pretend it's something actually endearing, as opposed to what endearments always end up being, something bizarre.

[ Watch your step lest you be caught off guard. He calmly lays the side of his cheek on a propped up fist. ]

Perhaps. [ a beat ] Well, it's nothing to do with pigs.

[ That's right. There are Swedish endearments that include piggery. ]

Touching. [ Nate puts a piece in his mouth, unsure whether his fiddling with it helped or made things worse when it comes to the meat aversion he's still working on, but he'll eat all of it regardless. ] Narrow it down for me. Vertebrate or invertebrate?

[ One German endearment is, after all, "snail." ]

Pretty boring costume, then. Maybe if you wore one of those horse masks it'd have a better effect. Much more unsettling.

[AS IF THAT'S A GOOD THING, PENELOPE, WHAT ACTUALLY IS WRONG WITH YOU]

I'm a designer. And a tailor. And I curse people for piles and piles of cash. How's about you, Dorian Gray?

[ He seems almost disinterested in her horsemask comment. Such a boring thing compared to the ancestor masks of shame. Those were eerie. He attends to the meat instead for a moment. ] You can do better than that. I have faith in your imagination.

[ A beat ] I write, I paint, I sometimes undo curses for piles and piles of cash.

Your faith in my ability is deeply moving. [Her tone strongly suggests otherwise! Good lord what an annoying person she is.]

Oh, so you're a white hat! Exactly as boring as I'd always imagined you people to be. Nice to meet you, then. [She drinks more of his booze, for punctuation.]

Trying to be, anyway. [ She doesn't plan to flunk out or anything, but one thing she has learned: medicine, particularly when you want to be an actual brain surgeon, is competitive. Gisela is ambitious, but she doesn't like to be presumptuous.

She sits back in her chair while she listens, hands folded on her crossed knees. ]

Confused ones, I guess. Ones that aren't satisfied by anything they seem to find. Which is normal, but the means feel new, don't they? [ She's 22. Probably her perspective on this is not quite what it would be if she were even a decade older, but Gisela is, at least, attuned to the desensitization she sees in people who came up in secure middle to upper-class homes. And it bewilders her that they can seem more jaded and bored with life than the ones who grew up in war zones. ]

I think young people are aware of that paradox, too, which frustrates them. They feel like they've inherited something they can't fix. My fifteen-year-old sister is in that group.

There's another author I like — so this is another philosophy, sort of — and he wrote that irony and cynicism were necessary in the 1950s, but now cynicism, 'cynical transcendence of sentiment', he said, is some kind of fear of being human. So then I consider that maybe people are just more afraid.

[ Oh, if she only knew how heavy a burden he bared from the days he was very much not white. Oh well!

Fabian wonders, briefly, if she'll exhaust her own obnoxiousness when she keeps hitting a wall or if she'll just keep hitting a wall. He's almost 400 years old, Penelope. He's been a stone wall to many an obnoxious person. Especially with this new age wiccan bullshit becoming a thing. ]

I suppose mentioning that what you put out to the universe comes back to you falls on deaf ears. [ So much so that he didn't even bother forming it as a question, but just saying. He'll just lean back again with a smile. ]

Pleasure is all mine, clearly.

[ He observes this with faint interest before mentioning: ] They have a menu and some of it even lacks meat.

[ A brief pause and then again ] It means darling, more or less. One of those normal endearments.

A fair assessment. So, what is it that you strive for through hardships and all?

Does it?

[ As if he has no idea why Fabian might mention that fact. He eats another piece with deliberation. What exactly that's meant to prove (or to whom it's supposed to prove anything), who knows. ]

Well... that's gratifying, and I choose to never look it up on the internet to keep it that way.

It does sound better in Swedish — it was that, right? [ A twitch of the good old mostly-monolingual-American panic, there. ]

I should think it might be obvious. I strive to create beauty in everything I do. I suppose you might call me an artist.

But I've been terribly selfish. What of yourself? What philosophies do you hold most dear?

In what field? [ He doesn't suspect she will flunk. She carries herself with an intellect that far outdoes his, he'd openly confess. Fabian is certain he hit his IQ threshold long ago. Thank the goddess for hipsters who like the smell of patchouli and macabre minds. ]

I have a lot of faith in the new generation. I lack faith in the generation before them and their ability to properly guide the new flock.

[ . . . ]

David Foster Wallace. [ He reminisces a little. Possibly not the best point of conversation to make but there was something about Wallace that struck a true chord with him, and since they're also talking about masks of rationality: ]

He has a lot of wisdoms. One that strikes me is his perspective on suicide.

Neurosurgery. Maybe neurology. [ Either way she plans to have almost no social life for half a decade, it'll be great. ]

That's right. I didn't agree with him on everything, but the big things he wrote about were universal, it seems like, and he never excluded himself from his own observations. [ Gisela doesn't seem put off by the topic change; when speaking about writers, the subject of suicide is often hard to avoid. There is a new delicacy in the way that she speaks, though, as she feels it's of greater importance to try to choose her words correctly. ]

What struck you about that in particular?

Incredible. [ An honest admiration, that. He leans back and steeples his fingers, listening. There's a small smile forming on his lips even as the topic changes into something more serious. ]

I think that it touches on an important matter of self. If the internal is suffering, everything around it suffers as well. While pain will come to others who loved you, they can move forward. Someone who seeks such drastic measures... I cannot imagine what hell they live in every single day.

[ Just an observation. He picks at piece of meat himself. ]

You relieve me. Ja, it's Swedish.

[ It's not as disturbing as it could be. Perfectly bearable, as long as he keeps talking. ]

Good. Sorry. Pretty tone deaf for languages. Anyway. I'll let you get back to whatever — [ He inclines his head at the notebook. ] and quit putting off errands.