Loyalty (I)

How long do you keep promises? How long do you live up to ancient expectations?

I’ve just discovered Lala, which lets me back up my entire music library online. He has music on my computer. Would he hate me for uploading it, where other users can hear it? It’s not mine to upload. I can’t set it to “upload all but this.” It’s only the entire library. Would he want them to find it through me? Would he want me in any way associated with his name?

But then – if my computer died, I would need that music backed up more than any other music.

Also, forever ago, I promised if I ever sold a movie at Sundance for $4 million, I’d give her enough money to open her own cafe. It’s coming up on two years since we’ve spoken; does she want me to keep that promise? Is it even my place to offer it?

Would it hurt them more if I kept my promises or if I broke them?

addendum: Dapravity (I)

There is a song about fistfucking that sums up our ideas about depravity pretty well. It centers around doing something extreme, needing that extremity, getting numbed to it, and now needing something even more extreme.

Stand well back, because I’m going to quote Tool. Apologies.

Something has to change. Undeniable dilemma.
Boredom’s not a burden anyone should bear.

Constant over-stimulation numbs me
but I would not want you any other way.

‘Cause
It’s not enough, I need more.
Nothing seems to satisfy.
I said, I don’t want it, I just need it.
To breathe, to feel, to know I’m alive.

Finger deep within the borderline.
Show me that you love me and that we belong together.
Relax, turn around and take my hand.

I can help you change tired moments into pleasure.
Say the word and we’ll be well upon our way.

Blend and balance, pain and comfort deep within you
Till you will not want me any other way.

But,
It’s not enough, I need more.
Nothing seems to satisfy.
I said, I don’t want it, I just need it.
To breathe, to feel, to know I’m alive.

Knuckle deep inside the borderline.
This may hurt a little but it’s something you’ll get used to.
Relax. Slip away.

Something kinda sad about the way that things have come to be.
Desensitized to everything. What became of subtlety?

How can this mean anything to me
If I really don’t feel anything at all?

I’ll
keep
digging

till
I
feel
something.

-Tool, Stinkfist

(the chorus goes from finger up to knuckle and finally to elbow and shoulder, and I think it sums up nicely the idea that if you every try anything anal, it’s only a matter of time til you’re shoulder-deep in someone’s asshole, wearing them like a sock-puppet; with Tool, you can never tell if Maynard says something he means or says something he’s criticizing)

Depravity (I)

In our puritanical America (and we were colonized by puritans, after all), we seem to be afraid that everything is a gateway to sin. Graphed on a chart, this thinking would probably increase as religious fervor increases, but it seems to be a pretty prevalent mechanism in the US. Overall, our attitudes about sex are much more ascetic than, say, France’s, our attitudes about drugs more prohibitive than The Netherlands (obviously). Our age of consent laws and our legal drinking ages are higher than most of Europe. There are probably a lot of reasons for this, and I don’t know if what I’m going to talk about is a reason or just a symptom, but Americans, I think, fear depravity.

We seem to think much of the world is sinful, or if we don’t buy the notion of sin, at least unethical or dangerous or just overly-complicated. It’s not a matter of qualitative difference sometimes: monogamy is simpler than polyamory, abstinence is simpler than promiscuity, asceticism is simpler than finding a dealer and getting high. But not even just simpler; safer.

But safe from what?

I remember from my D.A.R.E. training in elementary school this notion that smoking pot for the first time is the gateway to becoming a heroin addict (and I think my parents figured swearing of any kind would turn me into a Tarantino movie). Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not; certainly many heroin users started with marijuana, so is it not safer to just avoid the whole thing? This is the thinking they teach us to keep us clean.

I suppose I can re-quote Martin Amis:

If you harbour a perversity, then sooner or later porno will identify it. You’d better hope that this doesn’t happen while you’re watching a film about a coprophagic pigfarmer – or an undertaker.

-”A Rough Trade”

I’m behind the idea of harboring a perversity, but I don’t think that’s what’s being taught, or rather, it’s more common to put the cart before the horse. People are more afraid that watching pornography will make you want sex, that taking drugs will make you want drugs, that getting kinky will make you violent, that reading Marx will make you a Communist.

With my recent first forays into kinky behavior, the only thing I’ve come away knowing is that I am not a violent person. There is a thrill I get from the permission to bite, choke, scratch, spank, and paddle a person, and that thrill comes entirely from knowing that I am not aggressive in any other part of my life. From what I know from other kinksters (and it is rather fun now to say “other kinksters” instead of just “kinksters”), kink can be very psychological, with all kinds of darkness and degradation, fear and intimidation. It can be a place where very real and possibly dangerous desires get exposed. But for a person who is dark and possibly violent, the darkness always preceeds the sex and exists beyond it. Kink will not make you violent.

And I think it holds: drugs will not make you want drugs; gagging someone and stringing them upside-down is not going to get you into bondage (odds are: you’re already into it). When it comes to harboring perversity, I come down on the side of nature over nurture. It’s true that exploring a wide variety of experiences might increase your tolerance for many things: you may smoke socially because others are, you may be willing to tie up your partner, but doing it is not going to affect your preferences. I know from a long relationship with a mostly asexual partner that all the sex we could have was not going to make her want it more.

The funny thing is this: as our culture espouses this idea that trying it will make you want it, I think we push more people towards real depravity. When someone is told all their lives “smoking weed will make you a pothead,” they feel almost obligated to become a pothead after trying it once. We don’t leave it up to our society to ask “do you want this?” We say only “if you try it, you want it, and are depraved.”

Myself, I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t use drugs of any kind, and I completely avoid caffeine. For a long time I lived that way out of judgment of the lifestyle; but at some point I asked myself the question, “do any of these things interest me?” At which point I never bothered with the idea again.

Addendum: The Cupboard Unlocked (H)

From Norm Fisher, after the death of his best friend:

• “The Buddhist teachings on death and dying are very familiar to me… And it’s not that these practices and thoughts were not with me during the days and weeks after Alan’s death. They certainly were with me, and they made my experience of loss much more solid, much more poignant.These teachings, these practices, are not for the purposes of fixing something or explaining something. Or somehow for removing your pain, or armoring you against it. What they do is–hopefully–they clear the ground for  what there is to be felt at the time of a loss.  And they help you feel what I was feeling and what I am still feeling: the extreme strangeness, and sorrow, and joy of our human life.”

And Jack, with his usual style:

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.”

Boddhicitta (H)

Don’t surrender your loneliness

So quickly.

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you

As few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight

Has made my eyes so soft,

My voice

So tender…

-Hafiz

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of it’s furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

–Rumi

The Cupboard Unlocked (H)

Norm Fisher comments that studies show people actually feel more unhappy after 6 weeks of meditation. Gil talks about it too:

“There’s a kind of increase in sensitivity that goes on in maybe any kind of spiritiual discipline, about what’s really going on here in the life that we live. And so a part of this then is a discovery of the extent to which suffering is a big part of this world and ourself…”

What it’s about, they think, is not that meditating makes you unhappy, but that when you start paying attention to yourself, you can more clearly see–and perhaps feel–your pains, frustrations, etc. And in some ways this is the point: to study ourselves, to become intimate with ourselves, and by figuring out how and why we cause harm to ourselves and others, we can figure out how not to do that.
This is part of why I love TV, part of the American consumerism that isn’t just about the consumption of purchasing things, but of having constant visual, aural and emotional input, constant stimulation. Studies show that when people watch TV or indulge in celebrity gossip, they rate themselves as being less scared of death. I think a lot of this is simply about distraction, and stories are really good distractions: our minds are wired to get sucked into them, and we stop paying attention to ourselves.
But it’s not just fear of death that’s waiting when you pause or turn inwards. For me, it’s sadness: anytime I’m able to actually really rest, it rises up. If I let myself touch it for long enough, I’m scared I’ll never be able to get it off me, that it’s weight will catch me and the depression that nips at my heals like a hellhound will get me.
And mindfulness practices (meditation or otherwise) are all about paying attention with curiosity and without judgment. Judgment, after all, is an excellent way to obscure things–if you decide fear is weak, how likely is it that you’re going to be able to clearly perceive it (and wisely respond to it) when it inevitably pops up? And I’ve found that with letting go of judgments more and more over the past months, my perceptions of both emotional experiences and thoughts are much sharper. Startlingly so, even. Recently, I had dinner with my parents, and it was as usual: they didn’t ask about my new job, about if I’m meeting people after my move, about my relationships, or respond when I tried to talk about any of those things. And when they left after declining to help me with a small favor that would’ve meant a lot to me, I thought: what did I do wrong that they don’t care about me? And there’s something of this sense that I’ve had for… well, forever, but usually I can only get to the core thought or belief of something so deep (and fucked up/ illogical) by writing. But this time, without the screen of judgment blocking it, it popped up in perfect resolution.
And emotionally, the combination of reduced judgment and aversion, and greater mindfulness, is a bit disarming at times. It is much, much harder for me to ignore (or more wisely, put aside) difficult emotions when they arise at inconvenient times. I am reminded, again, of Marge Piercy’s “To Have Without Holding“:

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

Except, perhaps, to replace the word “love” with “live”. Opening to my experience (or in other words, mindfulness) is like this: things bang and clash and I hear every sound. I lose my ability to tune it out or turn it off. Still, I’m confident that there’s pay off. It’s much easier to fix a problem when you know exactly what you’re dealing with. And I’m told that over time, mindfulness gives you the increased capacity necessary to hold the increased clarity.

re: Dominion (H)

From everyone’s facebook favorite,  Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

“The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse. Yes, the right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing all of mankind can agree upon, even during the bloodiest of wars.

“The reason we take that right for granted is that we stand at the top of the hierarchy. But let a third party enter the game—a visitor from another planet, for example, someone to whom God says, Thou shalt have dominion over creatures of all other stars —and all at once taking Genesis for granted becomes problematical. Perhaps a man hitched to the cart of a Martian or roasted on the spit by inhabitants of the Milky Way will recall the veal cutlet he used to slice on his dinner plate and apologize (belatedly!) to the cow.” (p. 159)

“Even though Genesis says that God gave man dominion over all animals, we can also construe it to mean that He merely entrusted them to man’s care. Man was not the planet’s master, merely its administrator, and therefore eventually responsible for his administration.  Descartes took a decisive step forward: he made man maitre et proprietaire de la nature. And surely there  is a deep connection between that step and the fact that he was also the one who point-blank denied  animals a soul. Man is master and proprietor, says Descartes, whereas the beast is merely an automaton,  an animated machine, a machina animata. When an animal laments, it is not a lament; it is merely the  rasp of a poorly functioning mechanism. When a wagon wheel grates, the wagon is not in pain; it simply needs oiling. Thus, we have no reason to grieve for a dog being carved up alive in the laboratory.” (p. 160)

“True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.” (p. 161)

And for good measure:

“For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” – Pythagoras (re: karma)

“If [man] is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practise kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” – Immanuel Kant

Addendum: Desire (H)

(Ian, can’t get the formatting standard – can you fix, please?)

I stand in front of shelves of poetry and my desire surges. 
this has been a problem my whole life, 
so much want in a body a body so small, an even hundred pounds, 
with narrow shoulders, with fingers small enough to 
untie the tightest of shoelace knots, or 
disengage a piece of bread from a toaster without touching the 
live wire inside
I open books: Mary Oliver, Philip Larkin, 
and the other Greats
and to read the words is not enough. 
I can say them a hundred times over, recite them to 
patient friends or sated lovers, 
copy them down to feel the rush of 
creation, or perhaps discovery but 
it is not enough
What to do with beautiful things! 
or people: consumption is the nearest
approximation. So I see wood, 
rich and ringed and I want to chew on it, 
to eat the brilliant blue paint on my pallet
when I used to think I might be an artist, 
to bite the chubby, bouyant fingers of the Aryan perfect infant 
I used to babysit on Friday nights
Now, I take my lovers into me, or carve my 
name into their skin as if possession could do 
what consumption cannot
But there is no sating it that I can find
And standing in front of these books, like anger, 
the desire makes my fists clench
like sadness, my stomach turns and pains 
I forgot that words were my first love: 
long before I put lips and other spare parts to my mouth to sample them, 
I spent hours languishing with words, 
feeling out their shapes with my tongue, testing their strength 
against my teeth 
Flesh always gives, 
or pulls out of the way
but words keep their form, even against the insistent striking of desire 

Faking It (H)

It feels like I’m faking it. No, not during sex, during conversation. I want to be someone with whom people feel safe, someone with whom they can be open, with whom they have no reason to feel fear. And I believe that love (thanks Leah!) is a verb. It’s not so much about what you feel–you can’t force a feeling, or promise one–but about acting in certain ways. Or as MLK says:

“In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.” – 1957, “Loving Your Enemies”  

And of course I have lots of room to grow, but it seems like I’ve gotten some parts about making people feel comfortable or listened to down well enough, or have practiced them enough, that they’re habitual, automatic. And convincing.

There are two problems with this. One is that for the last couple months I just haven’t felt it. I act is if I’m in connection with the people I meet because I’ve come to thinking that acting anyway other than loving (loving in the verb sense of agape-ing or metta-ing, showing compassion, giving attention, etc.) is unethical. But when I meet someone new and we part ways after a drink or coffee, there’s just nothing there on my end. I faked it, but I didn’t make it. A potentially embarrassing side-effect is an inability to remember the conversations I’ve had in these situations.

The other problem is that people expect something after. It’s like your one night stand assuming he’s your boyfriend. Can’t you give a little milk without someone trying to buy the cow? Whatever happened to casual emotional intimacy, NSA empathy?

That said, I think the lack is more about me than the people I’m meeting. Heart break can refer not just to pain, but break in a more typical use of the word break: making a thing unable to function properly.

Still, I’m reminded of a poem I loved as a teenager: 

Who Are My People?

My people? Who are they?

I went into the church where the congregation
Worshiped my God. Were they my people?
I felt no kinship to them as they knelt there.
My people! Where are they?
I went into the land where I was born,
Where men spoke my language…
I was a stranger there.
“My people,” my soul cried. “Who are my people?”

Last night in the rain I met an old man
Who spoke a language I do not speak,
Which marked him as one who does not know my God.
With apologetic smile he offered me
The shelter of his patched umbrella.
I met his eyes… And then I knew…

-Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni

8 Months Later (H)

Ed Brown reads this poem in my favorite talk of his:

A land not mine, still

A land not mine, still
forever memorable,
the waters of its ocean
chill and fresh.

Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine,
late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.

Sunset in the ethereal waves:
I cannot tell if the day
is ending, or the world, or if
the secret of secrets is inside me again.

- Anna Akhmatova, translated Jane Kenyon