One Personal Journey in Association with Jacqueline: A Reply to "Esoterica and Sime/Gen Fandom"
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| Title: | One Personal Journey in Association with Jacqueline: A Reply to "Esoterica and Sime/Gen Fandom" |
| Creator: | Katie Filipowica |
| Date(s): | May 1989 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Sime~Gen |
| Topic: | |
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One Personal Journey in Association with Jacqueline: A Reply to "Esoterica and Sime/Gen Fandom is a very long and extremely personal essay by Katie Filipowica.
It was written in response to Esoterica and Sime/Gen Fandom. Both were printed in Ambrov Zeor #17.
Its topic was Katie Filipowica's personal journey with , religion, depression, alienation, underachieving, anxiety, being miserable, her relationship to fandom and specifically to Sime~Gen and other books written by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, as well as her personal tumultuous relationship with Lichtenberg herself.
Some Excerpts
That was a very bleak period in my life—I was stuck, not knowing what! wanted to do with my life, and not really trying to find out—no job (and no profession), no religion, no close friends. I guess I found a certain security" there in my parents' house, and I didn't want to jostle it. Reading HoZ began the process of jostling it. Although it has taken years of very slow progress, I am, through association with Jacqueline and her fandom, coming to realize that life is process, not static "security"—that it is a matter of exploring and experiencing, of questioning assumptions, of realizing that doubt is OK, of becoming one's own best self (not anything somebody else insists you should be).
I also read "House of Zeor." Entranced, I wrote to Jacqueline, who replied quickly, asking lots of questions, as she was still doing research for Star Trek Lives!. I soon lost touch with her, but she had irretrievably expanded my reading horizons (and maturity level) by introducing me to the work of Marion Zimmer Bradley and others—I can still remember standing at the kitchen table trying to prepare something while I was literally shaking after first reading the beautiful inter-species sex scene in "World Wreckers." After that. I had less tendency to put down a book because it made me feel uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, I found the school library media course very enjoyable. I particularly liked the media production courses (film, slide shows, television). But my attitude toward coming out of my hole had not changed. I was simply living in fear—not fear of any particular thing, just fear-full. Afraid of extending myself in arty way, of taking chances or showing myself to others, of failing, of being changed. I had hit the atheist stage—I wouldn't go near a church. My emotions dried up—I had always cried easily; now, I couldn't do that anymore.
Then, in the spring of 1977, the paperback HoZ came out, and I wrote to Jacqueline again. I had been surviving on my own fantasies of Klyd, thinking no other book in the series would ever appear again—and now it looked like one might. By then, Sime/Gen fandom existed, and I leaped right in. I began travelling to cons and to visit other fans, including Jacqueline. Over the next few years, I co-edited, then edited, a Companion in Zeor, did Ambrov Zeor's letter column, took on the "welcome to fandom" duties that Chanel does now, helped start one of the most productive of the Friends of Darkover councils (Arilinn), and served on the 3-person committee that ran the first annual Darkover Grand Council Meeting. I had close friends and enthusiastic interests for the first time in years.
Jacqueline began introducing me to astrology, tarot, and qabalah, all as a part of developing an awareness of God, of the divine structure of the universe. I began by resisting (claptrap?), then by misusing tarot by attempting to use it to predict. Jacqueline immediately corrected me. Suddenly, I wanted desperately to be able to pray, to be able to talk to this God I guess I was never really able to believe didn't exist. Bui I couldn't. Jacqueline gave me a book, Positive Magic, that had prayers in it, though they weren't called that, and I was able to use it a little. I began seeing things about myself and my life that I didn't like, which led to sobbing fits. It was a remarkable relief to be able to cry again.
I had made my most important step, leaving home and throwing myself in with the people I'd met in fandom. Personally, fannishly, and spiritually, I continued to grow. Professionally, things progressed more slowly.
Fannishly, I continued work on the S/G concordance, edited Zeor Forum, and, as the expert on S/G history, wrote the chronologies that were printed in the paperback editions of First Channel and RenSime. In 1984, Jacqueline and Jean Lorrah floored me by dedicating "Zelerod's Dream" to me and using my alter-ago fan-fictional character Kitty in the book. In general sf fandom, I traveled all over to worldcons, working my way up the ranks of staff, until in 1966 I was asked to head Atlanta's Information Department—a full Committee position. The experience I gained with that helped me in my job that September.
Personally, I began the slow process of creeping toward sexual maturity, which I'm still far away from. The whole subject of homosexuality had always upset me—one of those areas you just don't talk about or think about. I found myself mediating in Sime/Gen fandom between those with my problem and those of my friends who turned out to be gay or bisexual and Jacqueline who claimed there were no homosexual channels.
I'm still confused about the role esoterica ought to play in my spiritual life. I haven't consulted tarot cards, partly because I haven't felt a need to, and partly out of tear I might do it for the wrong reasons (i.e. fear of the future and wanting to control it). I don't know what my role should be in mulb-tradition rituals at conventions. But I am continuing to question, attempting to clear up the confusion, working to stay open to trying new roies. Two things about myself are clear from my association with fandom. First, I have been exposed to so many points of view—religious, philosophical, sexual. I see truth in all these points of view. What's so great about fans is that nobody tries to push their own systems onto you—they just encourage you to develop and live fully your own system. My problem is to consciously examine all these different systems, all valid ways of describing the same ultimate truth, to arrive at an understanding of just what Ultimate truth must really be like that it can be seen so differently by different people. In this way, I will become whatever I need to become. Much of my energy for this comes from fandom. My life dried up last year when I tried to stop the process.