April 8th, 2010 §
When younger I was moved very powerfully by them. My convictions were based on all the searching I did, weaving the world world together, adding more and more threads until the fabric became comprehensible, until its hysterias, hypocrisies, conflicts and conflations all became coherent. This is how I pieced my personal ethics together. And how I pieced myself together after that.
Often the way I “read” events, or the dynamics of our societies, large or small, mirrors the way I read individual psychology. I see patterns of power, with destructive dynamics that are subtle and deceptive and I recognise both the ease and false safety of compliance and ignorance. For those with power and those without it.
But I feel rather convictionless now. Or, at least, my convictions feel hollow.
Oh, I’ll still get on my high-horse about sexism, or racism, or any of the myriad forms of oppression which shape our lives or the lives of strangers on the other side of the world. But it is as though it has all been nutted out, as though there are no more threads to weave, nothing left to understand. And somehow, that static nature of what I know (knew?) to be just has seeped into my perception of the possibility of change.
My anger feels passive. Or contrived. Or pointless. Because all I see is… iteration… iteration… iteration…
I said as much yesterday in the comment thread of Stephen Wright’s A language of dissent. I said, “I wish I could see that those ruptures were possible. I really do.”
I wish I could envisage an end. Or, even, just a tiny crack in this world where “Change” is on high rotation but everything remains the same.
Stephen’s response directed me toward an earlier post which I had only skimmed over previously because I found the discussion there difficult to understand for reasons which will later become clear: The marginal and the imaginary . There he writes…
But there are cracks in everything, where some kind of generative thought can be played out. The politics of marginal space is all that is left to us, all there has ever been really, and fortunately, in a way, that’s the space where most of us are given the chance to live.
Perhaps that cloth I wove has simply become too large for me. I cannot change the world, not with a word. Not with propaganda of the deed. (Although it seems at times that air raid sirens and bombers overhead might be all that will make us step off this damned treadmill.) But the desire to tear it all down is simply an expression of that sense of futility I wish did not exhaust my passion.
There were always two central ideas which gave form to my younger convictions. The first was evident in that lone publication credit I have to my name. In it I am talking specifically about the Communist Manifesto, and perhaps it was poorly written (it was certainly over-written) but it is the idea that being anti- leaves you very vulnerable to becoming only another iteration of what you are trying to oppose.
Manifestos are perhaps bound to mirror the patterns of power they wish to overthrow because they are nearly always formulated in an adversarial context. A manifesto is shaped by that which it wishes to defeat because it enters the arena on the enemy’s terms and must immediately define itself against. Polarization becomes unavoidable and the opposing forces begin to operate on a symbolic level rather than an intellectual one, with all the simplicity and persuasiveness that level entails. {Overland 152}
The second was really just an answer to that: The idea that we build something new not by struggling against what exists, but simply by acting in new ways, by creating new relationships. When the dynamics of our societies are so entrenched that even change does not change them, we have to step outside. We have to make a sea change. We have to move, perhaps, into that marginal space which Stephen was talking about.
There is a long discussion thread on The Marginal and the Imaginary about the effects of trauma in children and, metaphorically, in our societal centres of power. Stephen says…
…trauma can cause the power centre to become more rigid, more stuck, more congealed, more repetitive. So for example the traumatised child repeats behaviours etc, over and over, which become very resistant, even though they are attempts at self-cure, ie: to maintain structural integrity when things keep threatening to, or actually do, fall apart. The thing about trauma is that it blocks any way into marginal space because marginal space is terrifying.
I struggle to get my head around this. I don’t disagree, but my own experience (or, my understanding of it at least) is the reverse. Trauma pushed me into a marginal space. Rather than making me rigid, I found insight through it; I found grief and complexity and imperfection and beauty and the possibility of joy. Or, as Stephen wrote, I discovered that “lives burst apart, everyone dies, happiness is possible.”
So I’m wondering where that leaves me, and how I arrived at this idea that change is so unlikely that I am simply crying into the wind.
One thing perhaps, from my own knowledge of the effects of trauma, is the way in which notions of guilt and responsibility become so very distorted. Perhaps this lack of passion is just me finally bowing under a weight which is not mine to bear. I alone cannot change the world Can’t slow it down, can’t hold a hand to help us get off this treadmill where each thing we try to build those better relationships, the ones more in line with our “profound concerns of love, mortality, grief, solitude, struggle and friendship” seem to immediately get sucked up by the politics of spin and by the marketing and PR departments which have their fists in every aspect of our lives. Sucked up and used against us.
But then, if not me, who will?
Oh, I know that it isn’t really my responsibility, but “I” is the only tool I have to work with.
By the time I arrived here, I was hoping to have written myself to a better answer. But all I have is sadness and the knowledge that the language of my dissent is currently tears.
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April 8th, 2010 §
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For anyone who has been following the Constance McMillen story, (that Mississippi teenager whose school chose to cancel the Prom rather than allow her to attend with her girlfriend) I was just reading some recent coverage (McMillen: I Was Sent to Fake Prom) and read this in the comment threat:
My Name is Austin. I’m 15. I myself have dealt with hate for some time. Its sad to me that the majority of you all are only increasing the amount of hate in our world. Most of you are no better than teenagers. Callings names, pointing blame, fighting. It’s childish. Fact of the matter is, Constance was not treated fairly. Point blank. No arguments. You can’t debate that one. But the problem won’t be fixed by a bunch of adults fighting online. Fighting fire with fire only creates a bigger fire. Someone stand up and be the bigger person, the bigger community. If you’re going to call someone crude, vicious names, you can’t expect them to do any different. Please, for the future, lets not act like children. My love goes out to Constance and the countless others facing hate.
I’m sure I could applaud Austin for the maturity in this post. I’m sure I could ponder the reasons why the anger that sometimes looks like hate might be necessary, or symptomatic, or powerful, or counterproductive. Or any and all of those things.
But really, it just made tears well up.
Because I would like the world much better if our youth didn’t need to learn how to turn the other cheek toward large injustice and be the better people by the age of 15.
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November 18th, 2007 §
Okay, what follows is brain detritus with foul language, and no stylistic merit to justify it. Don’t read if you’ll be offended. Don’t read if you hold me in any esteem. But it is what it is. And I won’t apologise for it. Or justify it. Because whatever it is, it’s better off here on this blog than in my head. If I deleted, this blog would become a lie and I’m sick of feeling ashamed for whatever I am.
Sad facts. I hate not being happy. I hate feeling lonely and friendless and boring and nothing. Even if it isn’t true. I hate feeling it. I think that’s pathetic. It is pathetic. Not for anyone else who feels like this. I have sympathy for them.
No sympathy for me, please. No, no sympathy for me. I have none. I want none. I just don’t want to feel like this. It makes me angry. It makes me angry being pathetic. I’m smart, I’m not half bad to look at. I’ve got an education. I’m capable. It makes me angry being weak. Because weakness is repugnant. Weakness is the fear of rejection, the loss of respect. It’s people feeling sorry for you. That’s not the same as sympathy. It’s people moving away from lepers. I don’t have to experience that right now to know it’s true. That’s the way it is.
Reality without it’s face-on only does two things; it fascinates from a safe distance or makes people run like hell. Because people are big, fat, hairy-assed pieces of chicken shit. They’re liars and right now I wish I could say that I was just externalising my own state of mind, and I am, and I’m pissed at myself more than anything, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not a little bit of truth in there.
I love people, I do. I love them for all their flaws and faults. I do that because there is nothing else that can be done. But boy, are we all a fucked up bunch of pansy-assed hypocrites. You know what word I like? Honour. And loyalty. I like that word too. I’m sick to death of seeing so many people around me using and being used. I’m sick to death of how fucking small everybody is and I’m sick to death of everything I’ve done in my life so as not to offend them. Because, you know what – that makes me a big, fat, hairy-assed piece of chicken shit.
So what if I’m not liked. So what if I attract people like flies before they dash off to the next pile of shit. So what if I could never understand my visibility and tried to be what a million other people needed. So what if I was present, really present. What the fuck made me think that it was my responsibility to fix whatever anybody else’s fucked up reactions were? How did I absorb everybody else’s fucked up projections until I ended up here, with nothing left of my own.
I’m angry and crying and angry and crying. Because I should have known better. And I should have been aware of what I was doing to myself, and now there is nothing left of me to like. And I don’t even care how fucked up the rest of the world is and I don’t even care about the who-done-me-wrongs. I just care that I’ve let something outside of me mould my existence, grind my existence to fucking nothing.
When I used to be someone people would come to, rely on for help, for perspective, for philosophy, for unadulterated fucking acceptance and love. What fucking use to the world am I now? Really… What use?
That’s not hubris. Everyone is connected, everyone is useful. Everyone conscious is useful. When did I lose my fucking consciousness. When did I lose my fucking conscience.
So, after loosening up my written tongue, that’s what I had to say. I would have said more but there was a knock at my door and B’s twins were there offering me licorice and wanting me to go and meet their Nan. So I’ve been sitting in the garage next door with a wonderful lady and Big Sis and The Odd Couple, and surprisingly, talking about real things. Talked about the people in everyone’s lives; rape victims, manic-depressives, alcoholics. And B’s autistic brother, and what it was like raising an autistic child 30 years ago. How she wanted to commit suicide every day, how she wished every day the bus bringing him home just wouldn’t arrive. How much respect I have that she is comfortable saying those things, just matter-of-factly, never diminishing the love she has for him, the pride she has in him. She can talk about the excitement of the first time he looked through the window instead of at the glass at age seven, but she tells no lies about what it was like. She doesn’t conform to everyone else’s opinion, to society’s story of the self-sacrificing mother. Which she was, of course, and deserves respect for, but there is no getting around the fact that we don’t experience life in the way our patterned narratives make it seem.
I like her. I like people who are not phased by messy reality. I guess what I wrote before going next door was how angry it makes me that people are phased by messy reality. And I guess that isn’t a new theme here, even before I said the word depression. So now I feel like, fuck it all, I am who I am, whatever. But tomorrow I will wake up and I will be left alone in my messy brain, and the mess of my reality will have, again, no place in this world. I need to carve a space out for it, even if it is only in words. More importantly, I need to carve out a place for it in myself.
Because,the world is full of people experiencing big things, big traumas, big struggles, big joys. Things which always go unsaid, things repressed and reduced, always hidden beneath the Sunday-best face we’re are supposed to present to the world. Welcome to reality, where people suffering suffer all the more because it makes everyone uncomfortable, everyone exhausted.
That’s just not good enough for me.
Life is fucking huge. Make room for it.
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November 9th, 2007 §
Two results of me realising I’m depressed. I am seriously pissed off. And I am even more exhausted. Depression thinks it is useful. It defends itself. Cas has just gone down for his afternoon nap. I slept through his morning one and my body is screaming to sleep again. Maybe I will. Maybe I can’t do this. Is that what my body is trying to tell me? Well, it can get stuffed. Because I’m being attacked on two fronts, physically and mentally. My brain is trying to to undermine me, but it’s angry, and anger is energy. So here, brain, have your say…
Ahh, and now it’s gone all shy and is pretending to be calmly rational again. But I have scribbled evidence on the notepad in front of me to use against it:
So here I am. Self-diagnosed and totally fucking furious about it.
Why? Because I am arrogant and should not have allowed myself to devolve into this state.
Why? Because I have done this before and resent having to do this again.
I resent being a statistic…
I am pissed off because I do not want to engender sympathy and support…
I am pissed off because I am not dramatically depressed. I am not depressed in an interesting, theatrical way. Not in a creative way. I’m just stale and this depression is the commonplace, pedestrian kind that 1 in 5 (or whatever the damn statistic is) people experience. I think I’m too good for it. But no.
There is no rending of garments, no throwing of teacups, no hiding in closets, no cutting myself, no starving myself, no throwing up my food, no shaving off all my hair. No words words words like swords. Just this dead person I think I’m too good to be. Ennui is boring Lassitude is sloth. There is no gaping, wounded emptiness for all the world to see, no catharsis.
Just nothing.
And it is my fault, my fault, my fault. Because I thought I was so clever that I thought I was done. I know everything, like a teenager. I know the secrets of the world. I know the Truth. I know that I am exceptional. And here I am. Not exceptional. With no excuse.
There is no excuse for being here. Not for me. Because I’m clever. Clever in the most clever way. I have the ability to make connections, to see the connections between things that seem unconnected. I have the ability to make the world make sense. Paradox and insanity are my best friends. Like most of my best friends, I haven’t been paying much attention to them.
I’ve just been hiding and wallowing and shrinking and shirking my duty. It’s my duty to know myself, my duty to be myself. That is my moral code. It should be everyone’s, but me? Secretly, I like the rebelliousness of it. I like revolt. I think I’m special.
I let my high opinion of myself absolve me of that duty I haven’t been performing for years. That’s pathetic.
I am arrogant. And I like my arrogance. And I am paradoxical. I am proud of my big pains, my glaring, gaping wounds that no one could make shut up, even when it exhausted everyone around me. Oh, yes, being hurt in dramatic, theatrical ways makes you special too. I am so fucking arrogant that I thought I could, and would, handle everything life threw at me, that I was never a “victim” – that I would never be a “victim” – that I didn’t even bother to deal with the new shit that came my way.
That quiet, nagging shit, of people who wanted me to be smaller. That quiet, nagging shit of having to do meaningless work and conform and dress right and and pay bills. And eat and sleep like a “normal” person. Stupid fucking me just slowly crumbled beneath the weight of feathers.
That’s pathetic.
And the other thing that is pathetic: There’s a bigger thing that got to me, a few years ago. A bigger something outside of me that I had no control over. A bigger thing that was done to me, that, knowing all I know, should not have made me a victim. And I made myself a victim of it anyway.
That stupid boss whom I thought was my friend who grabbed me in the kitchen, and undid my top and restrained me from behind and grabbed my naked breast and made me scared because I couldn’t find away to make it stop. That guy was a fuckhead. I reported it to the police. After months, he got a fine and no conviction.
What pisses me off was not that it happened, was not the lost job, not the talk behind my back, not the warnings that me taking action would give me a bad reputation and make me unemployable. I knew what consequences there would be. What pisses me off is that all the resources I had within myself to deal with such a thing weren’t used. If I had worked my way through it, no matter how long it took and no matter how much I fucked up along the way, I would now be proud of myself.
What did I do instead, with all my brains and all my skills? I just left.
I just left it alone.
And that’s pathetic.
See, brain. You did have something to say.
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