How can I ignore the cajoling of a happy heretic! At dinner a couple weeks ago, it was brought to my attention that my blog "sucks" now. I can't say that I disagree. However, I'm not sure it has been alive enough to suck. It's not that I haven't had my moments of wonder and dismay...worthy enough for a full on blog bitch....but my spontaneous expression has been a bit more internal lately. I'm not exactly sure why, I've come to believe that perhaps it isn't something that I fully or at least consciously control. But I do miss engaging with my blogger friends. I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. (the fact that I was in the shower is a purely incidental detail) ...it's just where I happen to have some of my deepest thoughts. Deep thoughts like... "I wonder if the new brand of dog food is what is giving my dog such terrible nose-hair curling gas" or.... "exactly how many days do I have until my kids are all pleasantly back in school?" ...or..."no I think it was the asparagus he stole from the garbage can yesterday"...or..."oih! (looking down)..I really need to do more situps". My thoughts ping and pong through my head most of the day. Sometimes, when I'm lucky...every now and then, I get them rolling on a nice cohesive logic train...but it doesn't take much to derail them. Maybe this is why I've avoided the blog...because it will force me to sit down and lay something out there in black and white and that takes a certain amount of committment, which, as with all commitment, also has it's fair share of fear. In this case, I am committing to ideas. I am incontrollablly open most of the time, a shameless external processor... and the part of me that is usually bound and gagged, the part who actually fears this openness took over for a while. Leaving me subject to "the protector"..."the sentinal"...."the censorer"..."the social filter". So ...now that I believe I have come to the end of my excuses ......I will now say...
"screw you sentinal....I want out."
(although the fact that I said "screw you" instead of "fuck you" makes me wonder how untethered I really am, despite my brave acclaimations)
So I'm out now. Reinvented I suppose, with my new name and my new blog. But not really. I'm just strongly attracted to clean slates. That's all this is. But it's still me writing on this slate, so I don't suppose that anything will be different other than the name.
However,...I do feel this odd sensation lately. Like I've turned some kind of corner and yet I don't really understand this very much yet. I feel.... sort of.... well.... I guess I feel "grown up." I think that might describe it. I also feel happy. Not a constant giddy, just got off the rollar coaster kind of feeling...but more of a settled kind of peace inside. A peace that is there despite what hell might be exploding around me, when it is...and its even there when nothing is happening around me (which might be a context worse than the exploding hell). I'm not sure what I can attribute this to... and I'm not sure it is something that I can fully trust yet. I've been meditating a lot lately. I've also (mostly) cut out sugar, enriched white flour and high fructose corn syrup from my diet....which gives me more energy, but can it also make me happier? Was the emptiness I have felt for long really so easily filled by a bowl of oatmeal and a handful of blueberries?
A good friend recommended a counselor that I've seen a few times and I'm now involving my husband in this activity (which is another way of saying "marriage counseling")... I really like this counselor. I've seen a few and I think she is probably the best match for my personality so far. She is firm, but kind and very smart. To me, she seems like the wise old sage on the hill and maybe I feel happier and more adult lately by what I've come to learn about myself through the discussions I've had with her, and the subsequent reflections on these conversations. It makes me think of this idea of "the other" which I think I've explored before on my former blog...about how important the role of "the other" is in coming to understand oneself. Often I think we use what we are not in order to define what we are. Maybe that is what I was gettin' at with this new blog. I believe I've done a lot of exploring what I'm not. But I'd like to talk more about who and what I am. It all begs the question of how it is that we form our identities. What do we use to define it? (religion..sports...career) and how we can use these same identity markers as something we can also hide behind. Thus protecting ourselves from others, and maybe even from ourselves and when we do, I think we get lost. More than lost...when we disconnect like this, we become vacant.
No man is an island right? We all need "the other", even (or maybe especially) when we don't want to admit this. I realize the tone of this post is becoming a bit "saccharine" (I've got to get my sugar fix somehow eh?) and perhaps bordering on the cliche. But as I've turned my corner, I have to look at what is now in front of me. What I think I see around this corner is a longing for connection. I want connection with the Nature that sustains me, with the Community that surrounds me (yes even with those crazy Mormons!), and with "Beauty" ...a concept that others with a more traditional mindset might call "God".
I have some plans for how to satisfy that longing for "connection". But alas...I am going to save that for another post as it is getting late and what I am currently longing for is to connect with my pillow.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
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5 comments:
I told myself that I was going to give my sweet tooth a week-long fast and seconds later an ex-housemate came over bearing raspberry cheesecake and chocolates. But now you've given me new inspiration. So I'll start again today.
Your post reminded me of a quote by Baudelaire: "In the places where I am not is where I find myself."
It also makes me think about that idea I mentioned in Utah--the "freedom from" v. "freedom for" idea. Our culture has managed to define freedom as well as the pursuit of authentic identity as a kind of war of domination. We make control a condition for consciousness, domination a condition for being free. In other words, in trying to give ourselves an identity and a freedom, we wage war against our self-labeled false selves. We attempt to subdue the other--the one we define ourselves against--so we can free up our so called "true" selves, when, in reality, achieving freedom and self-hood are processes of integration rather than conquest or resistance. THAT'S the heroic journey. It's not, as Hollywood and Nobodaddy (Blake's pseudonym for God) tell us, a fight against demons and dragons.
I'm glad to hear that "you've turned some kind of corner" and are feeling good about things. I'm eager to read more in the future about who you are (as opposed to who you are not).
Happy connecting!
K... I am pretty sure Shane simply hangs around your blog and then waits for a post. Isn't that loitering? There ought to be a law.
Delighted to hear the counselor is a good fit! An objective bit of feeback often wakes us up to the startling realization that taking action to deal with our problems can usually be put off until they no longer matter.
I wish there was enough dedication in me to give up sugar and white flour products for good. Thats not true... I don't wish I had the dedication. BTW... easy fix for a growing mid section- Don't look down.
I have got to get outside...
Later,
HH =)
It feels so very good and right to hear from your introspective blogger self again. Your post connects to my own current experiences in many ways; it gives me some hope to know I'm not totally alone, not totally bonkers. And, as alway, it's very funny.
Turning the corner, feeling more adult, and finding peace--good for you. I think these are the things we can hope for. Yet, as you say, fully trusting or I might say pretending that we have made the finish line, can set us up for failure and disappointment.
To extend the turning the corner/finish line analogy, I got thinking (ironically in the shower just now after reading your post) that so many times I've wanted to believe that my new insights represent some sort of finish line--a completed mile around the track.
But whenever I get to thinking like this, I'm abruptly and soundly awoken from my dreamy reveries of completion--there I am again facing the back straight with 300 meters to go. How the fuck did I wind up back here? My legs are screaming with pain, lungs pounding; I will never make it. Often pushed to the brink of seduction--fake an injury and go for the sideline--I have to literally turn my head away from the sideline and toward life.
I've often so badly wanted to believe that I'd never have to face the pain, the pounding, the seduction again--surely these insights are good enough to keep me off that damn back straight. I knew life would get difficult again, but never, surely never, as difficult as it was before. I mean don't I deserve better? I've already gone three and 1/4 laps, lived so long and through so much--it's not fair.
But of course there's always another rock to roll up to the top of the mountain; no shortage of rock or pain.
Well, that's my little shower insight.
I also wanted to say--good luck with the counseling. I just called up my therapist, whom I haven't seen for some time. Because I can't seem to find a base-level of peace, I feel I must commit to a more rigorous therapy program. Meditation has been helping me too; amazing what even 10 minutes of calm can do. I have much to learn on this front.
On a more intellectual vein, just yesterday we talked about identity in the sci-fi course I'm teaching. What you say about hiding behind and protecting which can lead to feeling vacant, reminded me of one of the stories we read: Elbow Room by Marion zimmer bradley.
The story begins with a great first line, "Sometimes I feel the need to go to confession on my way to work." Turns out the main character is on a "Checkout Station" in space where she guides spaceships through some sort of interstellar travel system. Right off the bat the reader is leery about the main character's grasp on reality as she admits that she is unsure if there are 4 or 5 crew members on her ship.
She has chef, a librarian, a gardener, a technician, a lover, and a priest all there to help and serve her, to meet her every need. Convincing herself that the very presence of these crew members--whom she never quite sees or talks to--establishes her importance (a chef and gardener just for me!), she holds onto to them even as the evidence for their existence dwindles.
She literally has been conditioned to protect herself from the other--there are no others, just herself--so she can effectively serve some government or planet out in outer space.
Of course, all of our psyches have been conditioned to create selves which protect us from "danger," give us purpose, and serve the system. But hiding behind these selves, as the main character comes to realize, can becomes, using sex as an analogy, an "elaborate and ritualized masturbation. It is good to be touched by another."
But as Shane indicates and this story seems to say, it's not about finding the authentic self or competing amongst our different selves; rather it's about integration. In the story, she nearly integrates all her selves but in the end can't face "terrible solitude" which may lead to madness. The priest (interestinly the only personality created our of her own psyche and not by the conditioning) absolves her from sin and she goes back to loving all her "friends" on the ship.
Not an uplifting ending, but maybe an important warning, certainly a fascinating literalizing of the identity metaphor, reminding me that to lose the rigidity of my selves, while being a bit unnerving and disorienting, can lead to meaningful connection with others. Well, I better end, even if it is with a potentially trite cliche about connecting to the other.
Shane...HH...CI...
I love you guys.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. You stretch my mind.
(shane you can loiter all you want)
"Often I think we use what we are not in order to define what we are." That's a very Tao like thought. Maybe what we are not, and what we are, are really one and the same thing?
Is music defined by the notes or the silences in between the notes? Would a vase still be a vase if it weren't for the empty space it surrounds? Both are the thing and it's opposite are needed, it's a yin to yang kind of deal.
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