Life occasionally provides small ones.
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
I have risen to a body not yet born, existing like a light around a body through which the body moves like a sliding moon.
--Robert Bly
Funny how each day awakes to its own exotic flavor, with trace elements of the previous 24 hours.
Aug 25, 2012--
Minor miracle--talked the band into trying Argent's "Hold Your Head Up". For a first try it sounded pretty great--lead guitar even managed to do an uncharacteristically psychedelic solo. Later we got into trance state for over 10 minutes on guitar and "Moog" organ. Interesting. Hope. I was on fire singing--I even sang in Italiano. Like we never left.
Aug 26, 2012--
Bigger Miracle:
THis is a Public Service Announcement: Monday: No school!!
Thank you, Hurricane Isaac! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES! YES! YES! you just destroyed my bad mood.........
I very much have always liked the concept of art being Secretive, "Cekret"....somehow it makes it more personal and visceral. One of my first pieces of serious writing was called
The Closet Artist, and at one point I dismissed it as some sort of peurile bilge, but looking back I think I somehow still love the concept--it's very much in the same vein as Percy Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark" who is the pure artist man will never be, due to self-awareness. I can always create anything so much better when I am alone, whether it is music, a visual piece, writing---I have to be alone in the space inside my head, otherwise I am too distracted.. Outside forces disrupt the electric connections I am forging--even if it's someone I truly feel strong ties to and admire. I guess this is why an image that was presented to me has become a fascination: the idea of an oppressed singer howling into a mattress, and muffled with layers of heavy blankets--captured by a microphone trapped inside with the singer. Indelible.
And, I want to repeat what I said elsewhere--why is it always assumed that someone keeping a secret is up to no good? Cannot there be motivations besides hiding sin? Secretiveness is linked in my mind with natal experiences, procreation, insemination, nurturing, birthing of ideas, inception.....
Aug 31, 2012: 9:06 p.m.
Something is hitting me at rock gut level. How good it is that some of the thoughts of the most interesting minds are captured on paper (or wherever). I'm thinking Bulgakov, Conrad, Wilde, Sartre, Shakespeare, Socrates, Coleridge, Duke Ellington, Blake, Kurt Cobain...but just imagine all that ran through them that was never codified or captured. Imagine if you could take a microscopic, nanobyte image of every moment teeming in their nerve endings, the concepts clotting up the seconds in their blood/ How much are we missing? What if we could ... trade it all in. Listen. We are stardust. Do I sound like someone who just smoked a shitload of stuff? 'Cos I haven't. I'm a natural born fool.
Why do we feel like we need some stupid excuse to get together? Fate--do your thing.
Love. agápe, éros, philía........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmR9F12CVIM
I was going to make this a separate post, but somehow the idea of making this idea too big seemed awful to me. I looked up the definitions of the above Greek words, to make sure I had it down, and realized , as is often happening of late, that in the past I didn't quite have the full picture--once again the filters of information may have caused misinformation, a narrowing of the ideas--and god knows Greek philosophical ideas are so often very complicated, profound and difficult to absorb. Eros cannot be reduced purely to lust or sexual attraction; agape is often interpreted as purer?, but not entirely what I was thinking. Plus the Christians have redirected its meaning for their own purposes, which is probably why I remember banners in my childhood church, placed there by the liberal nuns, proclaiming
Agape. I think they are attempting to refer to God's unconditional love. Or Christlike unselfishness and sacrifice. Since I was in various Catholic schools most of my life, this must be my source of misinformation. Surprise!
The Greek definition does tag this idea to sacrificial love, love that focuses selflessly? on the object of love with no reward for the lover? Margarita. If I'm seeing that right, maybe something roughly akin to the unrequited love of medieval knights? Platonic..on the unseeable plane. I don't know...this is the least understandable idea of the three for me. Too abstract, perhaps? Perhaps therefore tied to one's sense of morality. What does pure actually mean? Can anyone have a truly pure motivation and mindset? One can certainly try to have good motives. Lord knows I've made my sacrifices to others, to my own detriment, happiness, through the years. It's hard to sustain that without resentment.
What I found interesting, that perhaps was part of the misunderstanding due to my Catholic background, is that the Greek definitions perhaps do not seem to place any one of these categories of love above the other in profundity or impact on the human psyche.
Eros, which is passionate, physical, the emotion one feels of being around a person (or perhaps an art object or anything that makes one attracted to it), is temporal and changeable, since it it based on emotion.
But according to the definitions I read this makes it no less capable of affording a sense of transcendance and higher purpose about the nature of the physical world and its relationship to other possible ideals. So this makes me think of the Tantric tradition in Hinduism, like the ideas where sex can take you to a spiritual dimension...among other things--unlike the western Xian tradition that tends to equate earthly passion as sinful, not a conduit to higher places. And the original is not merely related to a passion for a person--it could be a film, music, a photograph, a painting, a building, a piece of writing, anything that arouses passion.
It is morally neutral, rather than immoral, like lust, because of its ability to give insight into how the world really works. It has proximity to truth, perhaps
is truth. It can
lead to mania, possessiveness, greed--things actually more along the lines of lust,things wrong (sinful) and harmful to others, but eros in itself is not the same thing. It can as easily go in a more positive direction. Well, maybe not easily.
So, I think I am quite susceptible to the flaming of passion for various kinds of art, but especially music, so it's the next step that sometimes might be the trouble that follows me. I almost always have the instinct to want to share my passion, the emotion it gives me ---which are sometimes dangerous ones and things I possibly am not at all willing to do in real life (for a quick and dirty example, but not the most profound, drugs) ---with others ( a very small crowd), of people I think will understand. But do they always understand my perspective? That it's art lust? I'm trying to come up with a concise term for this particular feeling--
art lust is the best I can do, although lust has too much of a negative connotation in my world to really be a good choice. Add to that my curiosity, my obsessiveness, my contrariness, unwillingness to let a subject drop...it's a wonder I have a friend in the world.
Translation of Plato on Eros from the Dictionary of Philosophy: "he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it.” Also it goes on to say that our desire for beauty is never sated until we die--this expresses my perennial and paradoxical satisfaction/dissatisfation with art, music in particular, and other elements of life. This makes me feel like I am always pushing for a more graphic image-- a more blood spattered, sense-tinged emotive --metaphor?? Beginning to hate the convenience of that word...And, my concept of beauty may not mesh all that well with the Greek notion of symmetry and perfection. I do like the Golden Mean idea..
Philia--what I've always understood to be brotherly, familial,"dispassionate" is the usual descriptor, non-physical love: Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, we learned in 4th grade history class--is somewhat that, but not quite. There is a physical dimension, but it distinguishes itself from Eros in being permanent, not subject to change--one explanation is that it is the bond you feel for a friend that you haven't seen for a long while, yet it's like you were never apart--you just start where you left off.
But, I find there is so much overlap in my important relationships with these terms. Hardly any one I can think of doesn't have a mixture, sometimes of all three. And I know Americans are squeamish about using the word "love" (replacing it with
like unless it's romantic or familial, unlike the Brits in Shakespeare's day) but I think most serious friendships really do qualify as love. But it's the minds' meeting that really drives the chariot for me, so that's one element of the "physical" and "beauty" defining characteristics that are a bit off in this equation for me. And, for me, this would apply to a
very, very small number of people. I mean, there are a few people, I am so happy to see, that it is very hard for me to hide that fact, that I want to stand near them, hug them, when I see them, particularly if it is infrequent.
Is that Eros or Philia? Sorta both--they do make me feel good--the closer the better--I just want to feel there is no barrier between us. It is passionate, not "dispassionate". But sexual? It is very warm--it makes me feel warmth. Does it matter where I feel the warmth? Some of these people I have known for decades, with no sex ever commencing between us. It does not feel like it's a temporary state.
Some people, I can think of a smaller subset of even the other group, who have this impact on me--that the minute---no, the
second--I met them, it felt like they were family, brothers, sisters, like I knew them in another life, another time, mentally connected through some transcendant path that makes absolutely no logical sense, yet every time I see said person, I feel the exact same connection, the same warmth. I can't imagine that feeling ever leaving, even if I saw them twenty years from now.
I make intense eye contact with these people, that I would feel uncomfortable with in 99% of the population, yet feel safe. From the outside I imagine it looks like flirtation, but that's superficial to what is really happening. But, sometimes it's totally fleeting and unexpected---one time, for example, I was at Gulfport Casino, at a Swing Dance, listening to a real band for a change, a not- bad band. I was minding my own business, when this guy came over, he had to be in his late twenties, early thirties--kinda looked a bit like Jack White--with a hat and vintage clothes an' all-- ( had noticed earlier that he was a good dancer). I felt little for his physical appearance.
Anyway, he's walking towards me, and he says something like, "I get the feeling you like to go fast.." I think that was what he said--and he was right: when I swing dance, I throw myself all over the place in total abandon, so that all the prissy gents probably cringe... I like the tricky steps, even making them up as I go along. I come to dance--wear my dancing shoes, no crazy high heels that will slow me down, even if they would make me look taller...
Anyway, me and this kid danced...it was the best set of dances I ever had at Gulfport Casino--been looking for it ever since. I mean, he probably had a regular partner he was more in tune with, as much as he had mad skills, but--damn, we had fun, or at least I did. I just feel the music, where I notice a lot of other people are intent on technique, obviously counting out the time, frowning at their partner who has misplaced their hand--missed the beat... Is it wrong for me to feel some affection, dare I say, brotherly love, for him, for our mutual understanding? Maybe love is too strong a word. I admired him for his ability to transcend the usual conventional barriers-- to cut through to what was really important--the art of dancing. I don't even know his name-- doubt if I could tell you his eye or hair color now. Didn't talk to him afterwards. There was very little sexual energy in our interaction, other than what was needed to dance well.
The eros aura can be more vivid. Yet, that does not imply the necessity of consummation. In fact, it may be more potent if it never is--to keep its warmth to a height, to feel the glory of being alive, to feel the singing of the heavens. It can be a constant battery charge, perpetual and perhaps eternal, leading to higher ground. Difficult. Possible?
All this is actually helping me sort out some things tremendously. I feel fine.
No. I am completely wrong. This is not helping. I do not feel fine. In fact this is beginning to feel like my Sartre post, where every word looks different, first true, then wrong, everytime I look at it. Can't stand the thought of anyone else looking at it. I have edited a lot and am still not satisfied. I think this is may be just too private to put in writing. I'm not saying what I really want to say: it would be too traumatic, too sad, too self-indulgent, too ecstatic, sarcastic...too je ne sais quois....leave it. Don't be surprised if this all disappears. One thing for sure --to go over the cliff has always required for me mutual love and commitment. Has never been otherwise.
Saturday, Jan . 12, 2013: Yes, it really doesn't matter. It's the little, beautiful moments of connection. Silly. Ridiculous. Without weight. Full of love. Freedom. Who cares what happens next?
Love increases.
However, there are some cravings of love that are never satisfied. Not even orgiastically. Morrissey knows.
Pelevin: "Love was absolutely devoid of meaning. But it gave meaning to everything else." Weird idea.
Sacre Bleu! Then he quotes Oscar Wilde: "Yet each man kills the thing he loves..." He goes onto say.."The murder weapon is love." Is that to imply that the person you focus your love on, the original person , pre-you, disappears and is replaced by an updated version that includes your killer love? Well, there is certainly something to that..they get influenced by you, become more like you, and you like them--you start sharing the same phraseology, like the same movies, hobbies and music, have some expectations regarding time, etc...perhaps at that time is when it gets dull. Robert Smith should be careful when he agonizes, "Why Cahn't I be You?" Deadly. I think it's best to figure out ways to avoid this.
There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
Reading a book that put me back on this most central topic. Everything Is Illuminated. In the book, there is a very self contained, talented, unique,crazily intelligent, beautiful, and much sought-after, girl named Brod. She is essentially an orphan, although she doesn't quite factually know that. She seems to understand it intuitively, however. She is the object of much Love/hate in her village in the Ukraine. She seems to purposefully distance herself from the "love"/attention she gets because she senses it is not pure---she is extremely intelligent and sensitive. One the surface the town calls her "dirty river girl" but secretly they have a desire to please her, to love her--theirs is an inordinate amount of interest in her.
One interesting fact of the novel: her adopting father essentially "lives for her". This is rather literal in the novel, because you sense he might have committed suicide if she had not fatefully come into his life. Yet, it seems their love is uneven...bringing up a philosophical question in the story about the nature of love. Because she does not live in the same way for him. It is my experience that this sort of parental-child love has this imbalance. I think I have this sort of unrequited? ridiculous love for my children, and feel less strength in the bond to my parents. I'm not quite sure if this is usual or just my own personal view , based on the personalities involved. It seems other people at least appear to have closer ties to their parents than I do. The love feeling, itself, though--requited or no? That is, essentially, unimportant...but, is it the defining characteristic?
Is the traditional view of love---Platonic, unselfish, purely a love of the recipient of one's affection--is that a reality, or is it, as Brod sees it, merely a "love" of the emotion(s) one derives pleasure from in the object of desire? She is--- 613 times at least--- sad at not finding anything--person, place, moment, art form, her own creative force, to find worthy of her extremely oceanic love. She is a sympathetic and compelling figure, (maybe something like the girl in Nausea?) but I can't quite decide if her view is correct. Since this is metafiction, another character, who I find even more sympathetic, the hilarious Alex, questions her view, while still becoming deeply marked by it. Alex loves many things and people--even those that make his life difficult, like his grandfather, Little Igor, and the insane Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior , or the dead. He even loves the fictional. His sense of love of life, art, the people around him, is unconscious and unexamined, really. I think his view is truth, more than Brod's . His love has a living presence, as hers does not.
Do we love for more than the nice, warm, adrenaline rush we get, the endorphine wave we succumb to around our favorite people? Would I give this up for the insight of a purer land--built on fresh lain snow and moonlight?
Yes. Unrequited, unproductive, unappreciated, my love abides.It is me inseparable. Too bad for Brod...she is sadness. I am not Godless...it is the god of my idolatry.
I think of this love conundrum in the same way I kind of think about God. To me, atheists are smug and illogical, agnostics have it closer to truth. If all we have is our own perceptions, it doesn't prove solely ours is correct, but simultaneously others have their own perceptions and truth, equally valid. And neither of those realities negates the possible existence of something beyond. We just can't "know" it in any logical way.
Kant's "The thing itself". Which Pelevin seems to disagree with, kinda?
Mar 26: I don't hardly ever do this. I know I seem impulsive, but I'm usually pretty stealthy about what I read--research and everything. Don't want to waste my precious time, you know. I was in the Gulfport library, and saw this pop cover sort of stand out from the other dull brown ones--I was merely walking past the stacks. So, out of curiosity I grabbed it, looked at the cover--sorta punk, my thing--read the first page, put it under my arm, decided to get it, along with my biased Russian Churches art book I found. After I checked out, needing to go to a different library branch for a book I wasn't finding, I started to regret the impulse, and almost left it at the next branch without reading it. But, I took it home. Read the majority of it in bed this morning.
Turns out it has the landscape of Punk 80's D.C. that my husband and other friends have told me about--pretty accurately. Dupont Circle, Adam's Morgan, Commander Salamandar, The Key Theatre where the midnight Rocky Horror played, the Exorcist steps he's taken me to : Prospect Street and M. (weird freakin' DC streets with letters for names)..Dumbarton Oaks, Rock Creek Park. Anyway, that was enough to keep me reading, although the writing and storyline was pretty good--never annoying, hardly even cringe-worthy even when treading emotional teenage minds. I liked it.
Then this: The writer ends by listing the soundtrack he listened to while writing--hehe! Old eighties club including The Smith's, the Cure("Love Cats" even!), Thrill Kill Cult, Ministry, NIN "Closer", "Tainted Love"......
Last thing...his bio lists his birthday. Oct. 16th: my brothers'.
This gets even more harmonic. The other book, the Russian Church book, has a picture of the swimming pool that replaced the Church of Christ the Savior that the Cultural Revolution destroyed. Plus a drawing of the old church, which the book editors want to fervently to rebuild. So, not an hour later, I pick up where I left off in my Pelevin werewolf book. What is being discussed? An apocalyptic idea, that speculates that a temple destroyed and rebuilt was not in Jerusalem, as most Bible people think, but the Church of Christ the Savior in Russia. Is the world really this small?
October 16, 2013:
Does this idea fit here? probably. I have noticed an odd thing about myself, when I compare myself to normal? people... I actually feel some sort of weird turn-off for extremely attractive people.
I'm not sure I can name an example.. but . I feel like I can sense when people trade on their looks, and it makes me tend to dislike them. Or feel sorry for their insecurity, which is a sort of irony. Well, I could say some celebrity examples: that would be easy---a Katy Perry,Miley Cyrus, Drake--Russell Brand...honestly, I really don't get it. Look into their eyes--find dead air.
I need to see the ocean's depths there---full fathom five. And ---on the rarest of occasions, I do. It has nothing to do with perfect symmetry--no Romanesque noses, long black eyelashes, musculature---interesting for--ne znaio? 45 seconds??? Their perfectly shaped nose, eyes, waist, etc??? Meh. A momentary distraction. For the long haul, I need to see the ocean, the sky, heaven and hell, especially hell, in someone's pupils. Have I seen that? Yes.
Dec 23--two hours from Christmas Eve:
I just watched this movie called
Passions. The movie for the most part didn't do much for me--the writing was uneven, the story about racehorses and jockeys and crazy beautiful women and other people. Meh. An odd thing is the sound crapped out 2/3 of the way through, but I kept watching, helped by English subtitles.
But there was this one strand of dialogue--spoken by the ephemeral Renata Litvinova--about how people, even those not particularly good-looking, have some moment where they reach their peak of beauty in their life--usually when they are young. But not always, and the length of time of this peak lasts is different for each individual--some seconds, minutes hours, some years.
The shift in quality in the movie is explained in the credits where it explains that Renata wrote her own monologues--only notable part of the movie, to me, besides the beauteous scenery.
So strange, but I feel this in myself. I have felt my beauty "peak" shift over time--reaching its height at different times, and definitely not when I was young---having recently been reminded of a picture of myself at 13ish, I know that is not the case))).
I reached one peak from about 28-31. Punk years?? But oddly, I'm feeling it here again, at 52+??? Who knows how long it will last? I think it has everything to do though, with the moments when life's possibilities open up, and one feels magic. I am lately feeling change and battery charges that I wouldn't have expected. Rejuvenal. Miraculous.
Feb 18, 2014: I am feeling some big shift coming on. My world cannot continue to sustain in its present state. I have no idea what will come out--a little scary, a little exciting, possibly a bad move. Been getting some interesting propositions, some to do with writing, some traveling. I have my own crazy ideas to add to the mix. Not sure of my own motivations in any of it. Time will out.
Mar 17: St. Patrick's Day, 2014: Yeah, that shift is coming. I did poke the bear, though, my own fault. Back to this stupid topic again, because it is what this is all about. Goddamn love. What is it, what isn't it? How much is respect, admiration, nostalgia, memory, passion? How much is illusion..sensation?
What awful strain can the daily grind put on it all? No matter what, this had to come to a head, somewhere, somehow. It will be good eventually, who knows which way? but now I feel grinding, grinding, grinding тоска. My eyelids swell, but don't release anything. I just gotta ride the insight I feel.
Haven't exactly felt any miracles or harmonics in quite some time.
I posted this quote on VK, and it sorta says something to me about all this...
“...what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky
May 19, three hours shy of midnight: Here I am, again-whisperss in my head---- back here again, examining the diamond -sided facets of -the world's most delicious and exasperating topic.
this message has been erased...it was all for myself, any whoo...
Forte.
May 21: I mean, the thing is, if this isn't it, then what is? I feel ridiculous and insane.
Jun 2: Gods are taking care of us. Stretching time to make it work out better.
July 7, 2014. OK, some facts--- there is a light, and it never goes out. I'm not sure why--it should have been killed long ago. But.... what??
August 15: Man, am I getting the zap on my head. I am finally watching a movie I have been anticipating: Lars Von Trier's
Nymphomaniac (Vol 1.) Will probably watch
Vol. 2 tomorrow,since both came on Netflix streaming simultaneously. I should mention, I have tried watching
Vol. 1 several times now in Russian, since that was all I had, on VK, but I could never get through, because I could see the dialogue was quite important to the movie--although I got the atmospherics and characters clearly, I think, despite not understanding the words. For example:
Here's what is so strange about this movie--the head zap--. I find the main actress, Charlotte Gainsbourg, quite appealing and easy to watch--she fascinates me and I find her to be a unique beauty. HOWEVER!!!
I cannot abide the girl who plays the younger version of her. Stacy Martin? Every minute she is onscreen I find my lip curling in disgust. She's not that different a
type than Charlotte: same sort of middle-of-the road looks, nondescript features, body, lank brown hair. But somehow Charlotte makes that interesting while this girl---ack. She gives me the creeps--seriously. I've always thought kids can be just as creepster as adults, and she's one. It could just be she's a good actress, or the director created that effect, but I think maybe it's just her...I can barely stand to watch her--her sad, dead eyes, her skinny body is like the bad kind of skinny, like you expect her to be able to fit through a drain and scare you when you're alone in the bathroom. Uh,, my skin is creeping.
September 16: Ready to talk about this again--soon.
All humans have :"their own way of having loving inside them and loving come out from them"....Gertrude Stein. How true. Especially how it's not the same thing--what's inside vs. what comes out. Why is it that it's so hard to express the feelings one has for another TO Him/Her?? Maybe it's because it's not real, but I don't think that's true.
I think the most supreme form of confidence, of truth, would be to express this clearly, without reticence. There's an existential quality to it--change the world by being you---be the one you are! Regardless of the eyes of "the other"--even if it's the person you think you love. They can be, ironically, the most intimidating, or are they? Do we just imagine the oppression , or even the live wire connection?
Are we merely projecting ourselves onto the other and feeling self-love bouncing back like a mirror?
I have a friend who has, like some of my favorite writers, expressed doubt about the concept of marriage, and, I suspect, projecting further, the singular, true love. Should we only love one? After all these years, I'm still not sure. I, certainly, after all this time have loved more than one. And, I have been in romantic relationships that I have known , for my own personal fact, were not the be-all, end-all --the kill me now, cos I'm in heaven. Morrissey's double-decker bus, crashing into us. There was something always missing.
But, do I know the person who is going to bring this out in me?? Possibly--who knows? Possibly, you could be walking around the same house, sleeping in the same bed with "the one", but, you haven't expressed it to the point where the crisis comes. Possibly, it's someone you sparked with, momentarily, on the metro. Possibly, it's someone you've known for a while, talk to regularly, but have always put up the barrier--this cannot go--you know--THERE. So you don't. you keep it inside. We humans are such rationally irrational beings, such justification junkies, we can convince ourselves of anything, depending on the temperature of our latest emotional pimple. Love/hate/indifference: talk yourself into one.
Funny, how I just equated "justification" with irrational thought-- yeah, that's actually right. It's just a construct.
I think I want to talk myself into love. Does anyone wish to join?
September 18: Some good quotes by D.H. Lawrence:
- I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams.
- Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
- Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
September 19: People of the worlllld--join hands. Join the love train...love train.
ah...that lovely 1960's cosmic love feeling. I was too young for it. But I feel it. Well, they also had it in the Bohemian 1920's. And the 1790's and???
I'm kind of thinking in this direction, lately. Some of us are just too big for our britches. For good or ill, but not up for discussion,or persuasion--some of us just need more life. More people, more stimulation. Others cannot do anything about it, because to contain us is to 1) kill us, our spirit, or 2) force us into a reality , an artificial structure, we do not really believe in...I wish I were like you....easily amused.
See, I kinda hate the idea that one person has the right to control, limit, censor, monopolize? monogamize? mmmm.. Did I just make that word up??? Relationships. The scope of my life. Mine's rather large, think. I'm not bragging about my intellect here. There's a spiritual, emotional dimension. The older I get, the bigger my life seems, the larger my capacity, and I really don't see any logic or, even, sincere emotional reason, for not allowing everything I am able to have--reach its full potential. This is coinciding with my lack of concern for "other eyes" --as JP Sartre might put it. Judge me, dude. Your effect is?? что??? Я не слишу тебя??? Now, perhaps this makes me sound like an immoral, or amoral person.
Please, I've spent too much of my life being an uptight Catholic good girl for this to be true. And it's not like I have a particular behavior in mind...just the general feel of my life.
I'm not talking sex. I'm talking life. Freedom. Music, even. Ok--two people get married. They never discuss their preconceived notions of marriage. So, then, At what point is one unfaithful.? Not just physically, but, emotionally. What did you think it should be?? Does it mean you are tied, by the hour, to the other? Now, who are we ---really.? Do I really have to spend my time staring at you, silently rocking? To the exclusion of all others??
Of course not. Even my conservative, 1950s parents do not believe this. It's a death ray machine to believe this.
A crisis hits, in the um, tenth year, after all the cozy housing, and childbirth bonding has played out.
I'm not sure one person fulfills it all for me. I wish---so ardently-------!! that it were true. So far, reality has not met my dreaming life's expectations. It's simple --his brain , heart, does not go where mine wants to. But others do. How do we solve this? I will feel oppressed, hemmed in, fake, a shell of myself? And then what--death? Heaven? Hell? Does God love me as he made me? Again, this has little to do with sex, but our stupid culture makes all sorts of assumptions.
I just want to be me. Free.
I am quite willing to draw boxes, make compromises, set limits, to make this go for myself in a way that causes as little harm as possible. I do not want to hurt anyone.
See, I am reading Night Watch. I am more than sympathizing with Anton's dilemma--I am empathizing. NO, it's more... I am him. The big moral picture looks quite grey, and I feel I've done my share of sacrificing for the greater good, thank you, very much. It's time my personal withholding, my oppression, is addressed--to bring the balance back to the center.
I am sanctuary. To myself.
October 1: ideas,,,yeast...beast....developing. I am angry, sad, disappointed, worried. why so hard to express? I think someone is so wrong, on at least 4 layers of life, maybe more, but how to say this and be heard by super-skitttish self-absorption: one emulsifying on the tension of personal rejection? How to say...your view is narrow like Plato's Cave, like a story narrated by monomaniacal keyhole peeper, like a horse blinkered so as not to see the fire.
October 8: "The Killing Moon". There was a lunar eclipse this morning. I got up early to see it, but there was too much cloud cover. Afterwards, though, the morning sky was beautiful--Florida fall and winter skies can be quite something. Even before the sun came up, in spite of the invisible eclipse, the sky was all hung with jewels, just like the Echo and Bunnymen song says.
The stars looked enormous , like planets practically. I could see Orion, the dippers, Scorpio.
The morning sky had that crystalline, sugary quality-- it would melt like a beautiful cake in the rain. That blue color---I almost want to say bleu--french bleu--like the purest color in the universe. My favorite color. Light angel color--virgin Mary blue. Then the white clouds, swept like they came from a dry paintbrush--but in spots dabbed on more thickly in clumps, some tinged with color from the opposite side of the rainbow--orange-pink--maybe reflecting what the eclipse color should have been. I can't stand and look at it too long, because I might get sucked up there. That's how it feels, anyway.
October 16: Nice karma for me. My friend Leo sent me a free copy of his book, which I thought was very sweet of him. I had helped him editing, and just making various suggestions. So today I decided to actually read it, for Teen Read Week, in front of my class, cracked it open for the first time (see I'd already read it in electronic form) and saw, a nice surprise--a minor miracle: my name, with "super thanks" and love, and the title "editor-in-chief" ---hahaha! Good joke Leo, so cute! I'm famous...in print.
Jan 28, 2015: Last night I watched this quiet little movie--half German, half-English, well most English--about a brief relationship between a guard at a museum and a Canadian woman sort of lost in Vienna for a time. Nice, nice film for a calm night.
It had this small section, where the cinematographer was filming all these steady cam , close-up shots of famous artworks. One part rather humorously, yet sophisticatedly, was observing many erotic elements of some extremely famous paintings: Greek myths, historical moments with allegorical, bare-breasted women leading a charge, statuary with only thinly clad drapery that left little to the imagination. The narrator made an extremely salient point about the value this has for humankind, for culture.
First he quickly points out the contrast to a similar, but quite different occupation of mankind: pornography. He observes the contrasting effect each experience has on the observer. After viewing pornography there is a tendency to feel ashamed--it is a viewing done in secret and results in the sort of ultimate restriction of one's feelings.
Viewing art of an erotic nature, however, is almost an opposite experience--it is done in public, and in the midst of all sorts of people: young, old, of any race or gender, or calling in life. You wouldn't call anyone viewing such a thing any sort of pervert--they are cultured, a connoisseur --elevated somehow by the experience. And you are welcome to stand and look for as long as you wish, without any sort of negative judgement.
What a beautiful thing.
The movie sort of indulges in a bit of magical realism , briefly, to make this point by showing all the museum patron in flagrante, if you will. Nude as what they are observing. It sort of jarred me at first: took me a moment to understand. But--what brilliance.
Ya budu tam? I wonder...
March 8: Love still lives, in my wounded heart.....
April 20: Another crazy list from the universe at large:
- The Cure: "Same Deep water As You"
- Агата Кристи: "Kill Love"
- Incubus: "Love Hurts"
- The Cure: "A Forest" (Live '84)
- Sugarhill Gang: "Double-dutch Bus"
- Nina Simone: "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair"
- Наутилус Помпилиус: " Как падший Ангел"
April 22:
Guess who wrote this?
Confession
waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed
I am so very sorry for
my wife
she will see this
stiff
white
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again
“Hank!”
Hank won’t
answer.
it’s not my death that
worries me, it’s my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.
I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her
even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid
and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:
I love
you.
Who? Charles Bukowski.
June 27: Just rewatched Stalker. Got me thinking about love, miracles, happiness and desire. What a film. Art. It's just-- a work of highest art.
(My son watched with me and gave it a 3, BTW, for slowness, muddiness, and several other deviations from standard film-making. However, I must point out that although he was quite restless and changed seats several times, he stayed for the entire thing. He often leaves in the middle of movies that he loses interest in, especially artsy ones, black and white ones, subtitled ones..in other words, difficult movies. It obviously had some effect on him he either doesn't know how to articulate, or doesn't want to...)
Two standout scenes, visually. the one by the "river?" or wherever it is, where they seem to enter an even more dreamlike state, and all those odd pieces of the detritus of civilization and its hopes are there in the clear water. I could look at those scenes for hours, and how the hell was he able to reproduce a dream state so realistically? More than any other film, ever--haha! Beauty School Dropout..!!
The tunnel scene is equally hypnotic. The icicles. And then they start to melt. Reflecting states of mind, I suppose.
The wife's speech didn't effect me in the same way as the first time.
But, I think what is, sort of, possibly..coming, slowly, to me this time, is a more coherent sense of the philosophy, themes, emotions of this great hunk of art.
There is something sort of screeching and agonizing about standing in a room where you don't have to do anything but take a step, and get your heart's desire. Which means you find out who you are. And why would you hesitate? That is..would you hesitate? Would you rather not know?
Would you then be happy? Or, are you happier in confusion and ignorance?
Is it even possible to get what you desire?
What about Stalker? Does he know? Is he happy?
I think, maybe. And maybe the satisfaction of desire doesn't look as you might think.
July 14:
You gave me one of those miraculous days of magic timing--where I must have just let myself feel the universe around me. First, I walked to the library, listening to Charles Mingus' "Freedom". One of those, everything-just-lines up-right moments. The sky was a bit pearl grey and neutral.
But then the wind began to blow and the clouds puffed up to steele wool gray. To almost "hurricane's coming" levels. I stopped and took a picture of a fir tree blowing, and sent it out. Tiny, practically microscopic raindrops were falling, not quite mist, but they did not even get my clothes or hair wet. Everything seemed to be for my pleasure.
In the library I found some good things--films and books I didn't know existed, and I read some essays of Aldoux Huxley on modernity, and music played in my ears while the storm splashed around outside. I waited.
Then I left, the breeze lighter, the sky back to pearl, and in a few places trying to wash out to a feeble grey-blue. I listened to more Mingus, Portishead, and Spleen on the walk home without a single failure in my signal. A seamless hour in my life: thank you.
September 25, 2015:
The universe is trying to talk to me again...1) I notice today that one of my goodreads friends started reading the same Edgar Allan Poe story I was teaching my class today. 2) This same person and his friend, came to guitar club last year, bringing a gismo that makes picks. So I immediately used some plastic from my old I-phone box, made a pick, did some dumb quick art on it, and called it an I-pick. However, an hour and a half later, it went missing, and I started thinking dark thoughts. I really lose it a little when I lose something I like. That was long ago.
Well, today, we were moving my podium so a kid could make a speech in my class, and what comes flying out from beneath my podium? That silly I-pick. Удачи!!!!!!!!!!!
It totally reminded me of the refrigerator cross episode I mentioned elsewhere on my music page, in the punk days--the cross that came randomly flying out from under my refrigerator when I was having a party at my house, and we treated it like it had magic powers or something. (I still have it, BTW). I shouldn't be so superstitious, but ...
Oh, yeah, and also I broke my cheapo Raybans that I never really liked. The arm came off. The reason I never liked them is I thought they were the plain black kind like I usually get, but when I got them home I saw the arms had this cheesy camo pattern on the side. So good riddance. I have another pair I like better, anyway, that I got in Augustine last year.
That's 3. Irony based on my latest Short story))
December 8: Amazing what you can see n' say in plain sight. ))))
You see, back home, people would wear these(not sure where you got one, or I would have probably done it, too). Usually people who knew someone in the army tended to get these. The had a soldier's name and rank, and the day engraved that he went missing. You were supposed to take it off only if he was found, dead or alive. Some girls at my school wore them, and not necessarily for anyone they knew--sorta anonymous, but I bet it made a lot of people look into the fate of the man whose name they carried on their arms. Wonder how vets felt about this idea. I know some were a bit cynical about the light burdens of people at home.