fall from light

Today was a gorgeous Seattle fall day. After a somewhat lackluster summer and a rainy transition into the rainy season, it was pleasure to walk my dog in the neighborhood, smelling the crisp autumnal leaves. Rejoicing in the feeling of sunlight on my face.

There are gray days here when I wish it could be sunny all the time. Re, the father of life, always radiating upon us with energy and the energy to rise. But my body is not designed to always be in the light. The sun has another facet, the energy of Sekhmet, the harsh destructive energy that enervates and dehydrates the body, or causes malignant genes to bloom into cancerous lesions. I've spoken to people from perennially sunny climates who say they find it as depressing as it can feel to be in the gray Pacific Northwest.

My cultural resonances from Catholicism has been to associate the light with good and darkness with evil. Yet I reflect upon the protective shading of trees and the roof over my head that allow me reprieve from heat and light. I find rest and comfort in the darkness, even as I experience fear of the dark. People who have lived in Seattle for a long time seem to make the most of the summer, but turn with relief to the time of the year when things cool off. Even I have found a kind of relief and excitement in the opportunity to slow down and turn inward.

The play of light and dark moves through my experience of life. I find that an artist I admired has said things I find appalling. At times I have connected deeply to her music and her artistic vision, and then there are moments when I feel she is flippant towards something I find truly scary. I grew up in a place where virulent white supremacy and a history of Klan activity was part of our history and continues to this day. Growing up, I and many knew of at least one town in which people of color were advised never to stop for fear of their safety, with good reason. That someone could be insensitive to this kind of darkness seems to me an unfortunate flaw, and yet I know that I myself have flaws, blind spots, and ignorance that would rightly affront others. I'm not free of racism. I strive to be mindful of it. The more I can own it, the easier it is for me to avoid acting upon it, to address it when I see it.

Sparkymonster says:

You can say and do racist things and be a "nice person". Niceness is not a get out of racism free card. That not how it works.

It happens all the time, all over the world. People and institutions we admire say or do something really fucked up, beyond all reckoning, and it becomes almost impossible to reconcile the affront of the action with the reputation of the actor. So we get people in the Catholic Church covering up child molestation, or riots in Pennsylvania protecting the reputation of a man who was widely celebrated but colluded in protecting a child abuser.

From Scalzi:

Every citizen of Omelas, when they come of age, is told about that one blameless child being put through hell. And they have a choice: Accept that is the price for their perfect lives in Omelas, or walk away from that paradise, into uncertainty and possibly chaos.

A world of light is a world denying, suppressing, and feeding a terrible darkness. When a person appears to me a glowing hero, a savior, to be in some way perfect, then I am denying their essential humanity, and contributing to a terrible burden, just as I am when I look at someone as inherently broken, bad, worthless, or inhuman. Clinging to one and rejecting the other creates an imbalance, and nature does not tolerate imbalance for long. The greater the imbalance, the greater will be the corrective action that attempts to restore balance. Protecting a pristine reputation means that the explosion will be all the greater and more devastating.

Command/Report

Communication theory articulates two levels of communication: report and command. Report is content, the literal information communicated. Command is how the communication implicates the relationship between communicants.

This is jargon but not incomprehensible. Think about the scenario in which person A really wants person B to wash the dishes. Some people might ask, "Would you please wash the dishes?" Another might say, "Hey, the dishes are dirty."

In the former case, the report is a request to wash the dishes, and the command is a relationship between equals, or an inferior speaking to a superior. At any rate, it's a request given by person A, who does not take for granted that it is person B's job to do the dishes.

In contrast, the latter implicates a superior/subordinate relationship. Person A's observation that the dishes are dirty is itself a subtextual, passive-aggressive command to person B: hey, wash the dishes. Furthermore, such an order implies that person B should have already noticed the dishes needed to be washed, and it's an inconvenience to person A that they needed to speak in the first place.

It is possible to say one thing and completely contradict one's self in the saying of it. Traditionally masculine, logocentric discourse focuses on the words themselves. If I can say something correctly and accurately, then I cannot be criticized.

Traditionally feminine, intuitive discourse focuses on the relational context in which communication is phrased. This does not exclude the words themselves, but weighs the command dimension of speech more heavily. If you say something correctly, but speak it in a tone of irritation or condescension, then you have effectively undermined your communication. Hence it is possible to insult a person, even while paying them a compliment.

defensive white men

If you are a white man in the United States, I invite you to open your heart to the possibility that you are inculcated with the racism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, sizeism, classism, and ethnocentrism of the dominant culture. That to the extent you fit into the privileged categories of society, you are given benefits and special treatment not allotted to others not in those categories.

If you read the first paragraph and you are already laughing, rolling your eyes, getting angry, getting upset, or wanting to argue with me about how your opinions are legitimate or your view is ignored, I invite you to take a breath and ask yourself what of those reactions are grounded in the above. Pat Buchanan said a few years ago that "white folks built this country," presumably for the benefit of white folks. Believing in that statement is a barometer of how much you have ingested the whitewashed version of history. This country was built by white folks, but also black slaves, indentured servants who at the time may not have been considered white, and underpaid Asian and Mexican immigrants, among others. The early colonists benefited greatly from their ability to simply move into existing Native American villages that were emptied out due to disease and genocide. But if you're white in this country, you are given a version of history that says your people braved the wilderness alone and forged a powerhouse out of nothing. That is the white myth.

Not fitting into all of those categories does not negate the privilege you have from some. If you are a middle-class gay white man, you may not have heterosexual privilege, but you still get the benefits of being white. Other privileged people pay attention to you and your viewpoint more readily than the views of trans people, people of color, working class people. Kyriarchy cannot be mapped using a linear equation, like saying a gay white man is "less white" than a straight white man. That's like using a measuring stick to calculate how much water is in a glass. Each axis of privilege intersects in a human life with very different consequences.

Isms are personal contributions to systemic oppression. We receive and produce them. I did not actively choose to integrate stereotypical and harmful beliefs about other humans, nor did I choose to be white or the privileges given by being white. Even so, I am white. I have privileges because I am white, and a man, and not trans. I have internalized attitudes, thoughts, and feelings about people of color, women, trans people, and more that are constantly imprinted upon me by our overculture. To promote justice rather than injustice, I need to accept this reality and be willing to observe myself. I need to be willing to be called out for these when they translate into bigoted actions.

If I can accept that these things are inside of me, I can be in more control of my behavior. I know that it's not all that I am. I know that I have values that call me to be an ally as well as these thoughts and feelings.

Being called out for privileged thinking and behavior is challenging. It triggers my vulnerability that does not want to be seen as bad, as bigoted, as not-progressive. It triggers my white male complex that I am being unfairly blamed for things outside my control, or that somehow being called racist is worse than the pain I cause when I act from my unthinking privilege. The best thing I can do is take a breath, listen to the criticism being offered, ask for clarification if needed, and figure out how I can do better. It's not about me or my feelings at all. Those are my responsibility to manage so that I can be a better ally. I may not be to blame for the crimes of my ancestors, but boy howdy do I still get all the perks, and my defensiveness does nothing to assuage that.

Happiness

There are times when I feel as though I'll never be happy. Life feels generally unsatisfying for no particular reason, or for a million reasons that all present themselves at once with seeming authenticity. In this state, it feels to me like being pulled down into dark water, and it feels like I have always been there and will never get out. These times are fortunately fewer and further between than they once were.

This state of thinking and feeling can be a toxic pattern into which I get locked, a reaction to a momentary sense of dis-ease or displeasure. All of which can feel very real and all-encompassing in the moment. The words "always" and "never" often come up, signifying that this is a story that has taken hold of my consciousness. As with taking a test, nothing is always always true, or never never true.

Another distinction is that thinking "I'll never be happy" is different from "I feel sad." Really, truly feeling sad is feeling filled with life force, with the power of my attachment, my loss, my disappointment, whatever uncomfortable feelings are arising, and letting them move within me. When I am in the place of "I'll never be happy," I am not letting myself feel those feelings, nor am I moving past them.

United States culture is quite attached to happiness, the pursuit and accomplishment thereof. Oprah Winfrey, may she be blessed, has built an entire industry upon promoting the practices and products that will engender happiness in the consumer, as though happiness is not an emotional state that arises within us, but something we need to imbibe. My suspicion is that we are so preoccupied with happiness because our society is desperately unhappy. According to some studies, social equality is the primary indicator of a healthy, happy society. Living in such disparate conditions between great wealth and poverty, we are constantly aware of our place within this society, between those that have more and those that have less. Either direction seems tantalizingly close. At any moment we might experience a windfall of success, we dream, or a devastating loss that leaves us empty-handed. All of this speaks to a mindset of lack, of not having. My intrapsychic experience of being dragged down correlates to other experiences I have around feeling threatened by failure, by loss, by my fears that I cannot meet the demands of my life.

I wonder if my experiences of unhappiness are not necessary for being more essentially grounded in reality. Instead of withdrawing into fantasies and wishes, I am truly seeing my life as it is and seeing how it differs from life as some part of me wishes it could be. Without that dissatisfaction, would I have any impetus to work on myself? If I simply accepted life in a state of endless bliss, would I bother to be compassionate toward my loved ones? Which isn't to say that unhappiness is good or happiness bad. My whole humanity contains all of these experiences. What endangers me is the "always always" and "never never" stories, and reacting to my pleasures and displeasures with a fearful retreat from my experience.

When I stop to open myself to these underlying fears, however, something shifts. That intensity of feeling arises and passes. I walk on solid ground and feel that experience of being pulled down, but what I notice is that it is like gravity. I am not, in reality, being made to drown. That downward energy is met be the support of the earth, who holds my experience and lets me become more deeply rooted.

Queenie Was a Blonde

Musicals are generally not my cup of fur, though apparently my tastes are undergoing a slow shift over time. Like suddenly finding I love olives, there have been some musicals that cracked through my wholesale hostility to get my interest.

One is called The Wild Party, which I initially saw as a production at Northwestern when I was an undergrad. Later I bought the soundtrack. My primary interest and encounter with most music is as a text. The performance I consider its own text, in sure pomo-academic fashion, but when I'm listening to a soundtrack all I have are the words, music, and delivery.

The musical is set in the 1920's and centers around Queenie and Burrs, two vaudeville performers who live together in mutual toxicity. In the first number, the male performers introduce us to Queenie, and the first thing we're told is "Queenie was a blonde," and later that her face "was a painted mask of snow." Thus her attributes of whiteness and female desirability are highlighted as her most important qualities, worth an entire number. In contrast, her lover Burrs does minstrel shows, as introduced in the second number, wearing blackface to sing about his no-good girlfriend in a playful, idiotic dialect. The dialectic between blackness and whiteness serves as a theme of the show, in a moment in which white people and black people were legally and geographically segregated yet culturally mixing.

The main action of the show is the wild party, which Queenie and Burrs throw in an attempt to distract themselves from the desperate emptiness of their lives and violence of their relationship. The first time we see them on stage together, they get into an angry quarrel that leads to Burrs almost assaulting her and Queenie threatening to kill him. So we can be justifiably concerned that things will not end well, particularly when the mooch Mr. Black comes to the party and begins to flirt with Queenie.

The characters at the party all get a turn at a song and a subplot of their own attempts and failures of success on stage, their mutual betrayals and insecurities, their seeking of the next party and the next glass of gin to choke back the rage. The characters introduce themselves at the party with a joyful, happy little song that hints at the darkness to come, when Burrs breaks out the gin and plays the part of Loki, destructive trickster that calls out their little deceptions until the anger erupts outward. Then there's an onstage orgy.

While I don't think of this as one of the more profound or memorable musicals, there is a skill that I admire in the way lyrics and music are used to echo and comment upon each other implicitly. We're told in the first song that Queenie has "legs built to drive men mad," again letting us know that her value is only understood in her desirability to men, as though she were in fact created to be objectified. Later, Dolores, a performer past her prime who wants to get back in the spotlight, tries to market herself by referencing that her own legs "were built to drive men mad."

If one's value is only determined by such desirability, if no skill or inherent artistry is required, and if one's value is determined by skin color, accidents of birth, then what is left but the emptiness that each character tries to fill with more sex, more liquor, "more toxicity?" All that is seen is the painted mask of snow, freezing and numbing the anger inside.

The Choices I’ve Made

A witty and insightful person last night asked me about my writing. My understanding of the question was that some people write part-time, as a hobby, whereas others consider themselves to be writers first and foremost, and he wasn't sure where I fit in that spectrum.

I've been figuring out my relationship with writing since graduating from college, or probably longer. I decided when I was eight that it was my dream to be a published novelist, before I knew what that meant and how sustainable a choice that would be. I studied creative writing in fiction in college, met Real Authors, and left with the sense that it would be quite an uphill climb to make a living on my fiction writing.

In addition, while in college I realized my life was pretty lopsided. I felt like my soul was incomplete. In my most self-aggrandizing fantasies, I could not imagine surviving the scrutiny and charm of a "famous life" without becoming wholly identified with it and inevitably crushed. This is how my mind works.

Finally, after getting shut out of ten (!) MFA programs, it occurred to me that I didn't want to write the kind of books that were popular with the literary set, or the pop set. The novel I ended up writing is not very accessible to pop culture, as I understand it. Not that I tried to be obscure and avant-garde, but I wrote a post-apocalyptic novel that's not exactly post-apocalyptic; a fantasy novel that reads more like a prose poem. It may not keep most people's attention. It may not keep anyone's attention.

But part of me still yearned to achieve the dream of published novelist. In contemplating the epublishing venue, I wondered whether I would be settling for something less than a "real" publication with a physical book, the way I had dreamed. Then I thought about Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs, among many other currently respected authors, who were originally published as trashy pulp literature. Who knows what time and taste will do. And in the end, what control do I as an author have over how others will receive and perceive my work? What I can celebrate is my own achievement in doing the best work I can, and putting it out there for others to read.

In the meantime, I continue to write because in some way I need it. I do not enjoy life without creative work. And I continue to seek a deeper fulfillment for my soul through tending my relationships, showing up to my life, and pursuing my spiritual work.