There is something about this time of year - my favourite time of year - that changes what I want to fill my mind with. Often I have turned to Boswell's Johnson in the past, or sometimes to Sherlock Holmes, only short-term because I want to slap Holmes. This year I'm finding myself listening to cosy Golden Age murders. One I listened to recently, Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger, has set me thinking.
It is very clear why these Golden Age mysteries continue to be popular, despite their often cardboard characterisation & plots holed like old socks, the reason is the world they portray. The Moving Finger is set in a village, with all the characteristic intrigue you get in a Christie village, despite the simplicity of the solution, which Miss Marple insists is perfectly obvious. She fulfills the role of providing a safety net in a world invaded by a dangerous murderer, but which otherwise is inhabited by safe stock characters. The book invites the reader to become a native of the village for a time, which would necessarily mean being surrounded by people one had known all ones life. The feeling of familiarity & safety would be incredibly seductive.
But the point I want to make is that this is not real. For me personally the very idea of living in a village makes me want to flee to the nearest city screaming for anonymity. The life in a Christie village would be so stifling, & actually not cosy at all. Small communities have ways of imposing their own standards on their inhabitants. Having grown up in a Black Country village - one which was superficially well in communication with larger places near by - I can witness to the horizon-narrowing effect of small communities.
Those kind of places are the kind of places that people like me get out of at the first opportunity. If anyone is tempting to hurl the 'snob' epithet at me, do an experiment: move to a small village. Act as if you are a transsexual, without saying 'I am a transsexual', but otherwise act as if you were. Believe me, you'll want to be out of there in no time.
It boils down, as so many things do, to the person that you want to be. Obviously sometimes it's to do with the person that you just are, when it includes such things as sexual orientation, gender, & race. Sometimes you just have to get out of where you are.
When other people do things that we don't want, we have the option if we swish to try to negotiate with them about what they are doing, in addition to the option of getting out. Otherwise you have the potential to create yourself as you will yourself to be. Sometimes they mix. For example, I am very very high maintenance - but you'd sussed that, hadn't you? I take offence very easily & throw a hissy fit easily. So, for example, if I send a friend a text & he doesn't reply I will automatically start looking for reinforcing evidence that I'm not being paid enough attention. And of course sometimes that is actually true: as we change our relationships change.
But here's the nub, & the bit that will explain why I can't do cosy, because living the Willed life is never cosy. I don't want to be a touchy old queen. I don't want to be a difficult old man - at least no more difficult than I already am. My will is to become hopefully more flexible & easy-going as I get older. Hence the recognition of my own touchiness & a lack of comfort at it is essential. Cosy means stagnation, & I flatly refuse to go there.
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