Wow... the interviews keep on coming! :)
Jun. 6th, 2003 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeThis time it's ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kimberly_a!
1. What, in your heart of hearts, draws you to books?
Everything about the reading experience draws me to books: the texture of the page, the smell of new and old books (each has its own particular smell, have you noticed), the excitement that comes with picking up a new book, the sense of comfort and ease and peace that comes with pulling out an old friend from the shelves, the joy of rediscovering a story you hadn't heard in a long time.
Curling up with a book is like nothing else in the world: losing yourself in the story, so that you forget that you're holding something physical, allowing yourself to be transported into another world entirely, so that "coming back to earth" feels alien and unnatural. Floating around in a daze for days after you've finished a particularly gripping novel, unable to really tell the difference between fiction and reality... it's an experience that many know about, and yet I don't think anyone can really describe *exactly* how it feels.
2. What is your earliest memory of reading or writing?
My earliest memory of reading is sitting in my father's lap while he read children's books to me. The first one was Yok-Yok, a tiny boy with a humongous red hat shaped like a mushroom, and he would go out and have adventures with the creatures in the garden, which were as big as he was. I must have been about ten months, because I had just learned to walk.
One of my favourite and earliest (not *the* earliest, but early enough) memories of reading by myself was when I was about two, and my mother was reading to me from "The Magical Faraway Tree" by Enid Blyton. I know that I had already read it by myself when she wasn't around, and I got annoyed with her for "doing the voices wrong." I told her that I'd rather read it by myself, and wandered back to my bedroom with the book. I think I broke her heart that day.
My father taught me to write when I was not quite three years old. I asked him to show me how to write my name, and my parents have kept a few of my early scribblings. I didn't realise at the time that a capital "E" only required three horizontal bars: as far as I was concerned, the more bars it had, the better. Early on, my obsession with symmetry showed up, and I started putting in five bars: the three main ones, and two in-between. It was disgustingly cute. ;)
3. What is it about Lilo & Stitch that appeals to you?
I saw the movie five times last summer, because something about it touched me like no other movie had in years. Mostly it was Lilo, the little girl who lived in her own world and thought bizarre thoughts by everyone else's standards, and took pleasure in taking photos of the "beautiful" fat tourists who lay around on the beach.
I identified very strongly with her, throughout the movie, and pretty much spent the entire movie in tears, all five times I saw it.
The theme of belonging somewhere also appealed strongly to me: Stitch, the creature created from scratch, who literally had no family and could never have one in the biological sense of the term, was a particularly heart-wrenching figure for me, because at the end it showed that biological attachments aren't necessary to have real love. I guess it spoke loudly to me because I'm adopted, and because my parents love me as much, if not more, as any biological child they might have had.
Agent Pleakley was also a large source of entertainment, because he reminded me a lot of the teenager I was not so long ago: confident in his abilities, but otherwise completely at a loss and not really willing to let himself be dragged into situations in which he didn't feel at ease, and voicing his dismay very loudly when he felt it was necessary.
4. What were you most afraid of when you were a kid, and what are you most afraid of now?
I was terrified of my parents' disapproval. My father had a running joke when I was a little girl that he had bought me at the supermarket, that I was sitting between the bananas and the apples and he decided on a whim to purchase me. I thought this was hysterically funny, and asked him over and over again to tell the story, but at the same time it filled me with this vague dread that, if I didn't meet up with some imaginary standards, my parents might decide to return me to the store, as though I were a bruised piece of fruit.
Even now I guess that my worst fear is still disapproval, either my parents' or my friends' or anyone's, really. I take criticism very personally (although I try not to), and a lot of my time is spent trying to please others. I have grown out of a lot of my knee-jerk reflexes, but I still find it very hard to say no, and I avoid conflict like the plague, even when it's obviously detrimental to me.
5. When did you first begin to notice that you were exhibiting symptoms of bipolar disorder, and what happened as a result?
Embarassingly enough, I never noticed it myself. I went to a few psychiatrists from November of 2001 to March of 2002, all during a period of severe depression, and most of them only saw the Major Clinical Depression Symptoms. It was only after filling out one of those endless questionnaire-type forms that they give you that one of my psychiatrists asked me some very pertinent and astute questions, and determined that I was bipolar.
After that, everything clicked and fell into place. So, sadly, no self-diagnosis for me. I'm still not very in tune with myself, although I am moreso now than I was a year ago.
kimberly_a!1. What, in your heart of hearts, draws you to books?
Everything about the reading experience draws me to books: the texture of the page, the smell of new and old books (each has its own particular smell, have you noticed), the excitement that comes with picking up a new book, the sense of comfort and ease and peace that comes with pulling out an old friend from the shelves, the joy of rediscovering a story you hadn't heard in a long time.
Curling up with a book is like nothing else in the world: losing yourself in the story, so that you forget that you're holding something physical, allowing yourself to be transported into another world entirely, so that "coming back to earth" feels alien and unnatural. Floating around in a daze for days after you've finished a particularly gripping novel, unable to really tell the difference between fiction and reality... it's an experience that many know about, and yet I don't think anyone can really describe *exactly* how it feels.
2. What is your earliest memory of reading or writing?
My earliest memory of reading is sitting in my father's lap while he read children's books to me. The first one was Yok-Yok, a tiny boy with a humongous red hat shaped like a mushroom, and he would go out and have adventures with the creatures in the garden, which were as big as he was. I must have been about ten months, because I had just learned to walk.
One of my favourite and earliest (not *the* earliest, but early enough) memories of reading by myself was when I was about two, and my mother was reading to me from "The Magical Faraway Tree" by Enid Blyton. I know that I had already read it by myself when she wasn't around, and I got annoyed with her for "doing the voices wrong." I told her that I'd rather read it by myself, and wandered back to my bedroom with the book. I think I broke her heart that day.
My father taught me to write when I was not quite three years old. I asked him to show me how to write my name, and my parents have kept a few of my early scribblings. I didn't realise at the time that a capital "E" only required three horizontal bars: as far as I was concerned, the more bars it had, the better. Early on, my obsession with symmetry showed up, and I started putting in five bars: the three main ones, and two in-between. It was disgustingly cute. ;)
3. What is it about Lilo & Stitch that appeals to you?
I saw the movie five times last summer, because something about it touched me like no other movie had in years. Mostly it was Lilo, the little girl who lived in her own world and thought bizarre thoughts by everyone else's standards, and took pleasure in taking photos of the "beautiful" fat tourists who lay around on the beach.
I identified very strongly with her, throughout the movie, and pretty much spent the entire movie in tears, all five times I saw it.
The theme of belonging somewhere also appealed strongly to me: Stitch, the creature created from scratch, who literally had no family and could never have one in the biological sense of the term, was a particularly heart-wrenching figure for me, because at the end it showed that biological attachments aren't necessary to have real love. I guess it spoke loudly to me because I'm adopted, and because my parents love me as much, if not more, as any biological child they might have had.
Agent Pleakley was also a large source of entertainment, because he reminded me a lot of the teenager I was not so long ago: confident in his abilities, but otherwise completely at a loss and not really willing to let himself be dragged into situations in which he didn't feel at ease, and voicing his dismay very loudly when he felt it was necessary.
4. What were you most afraid of when you were a kid, and what are you most afraid of now?
I was terrified of my parents' disapproval. My father had a running joke when I was a little girl that he had bought me at the supermarket, that I was sitting between the bananas and the apples and he decided on a whim to purchase me. I thought this was hysterically funny, and asked him over and over again to tell the story, but at the same time it filled me with this vague dread that, if I didn't meet up with some imaginary standards, my parents might decide to return me to the store, as though I were a bruised piece of fruit.
Even now I guess that my worst fear is still disapproval, either my parents' or my friends' or anyone's, really. I take criticism very personally (although I try not to), and a lot of my time is spent trying to please others. I have grown out of a lot of my knee-jerk reflexes, but I still find it very hard to say no, and I avoid conflict like the plague, even when it's obviously detrimental to me.
5. When did you first begin to notice that you were exhibiting symptoms of bipolar disorder, and what happened as a result?
Embarassingly enough, I never noticed it myself. I went to a few psychiatrists from November of 2001 to March of 2002, all during a period of severe depression, and most of them only saw the Major Clinical Depression Symptoms. It was only after filling out one of those endless questionnaire-type forms that they give you that one of my psychiatrists asked me some very pertinent and astute questions, and determined that I was bipolar.
After that, everything clicked and fell into place. So, sadly, no self-diagnosis for me. I'm still not very in tune with myself, although I am moreso now than I was a year ago.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-06 02:20 pm (UTC)what are your favorite genres? authors? series?
no subject
Date: 2003-06-06 03:16 pm (UTC)And perhaps I should rent "Lilo & Stitch".
no subject
Date: 2003-06-06 10:37 pm (UTC)*g*
Well, soon.
It's a beautiful, sweet, and very original movie, which actually escapes all of the Disney clichés, for which I am very grateful. :)