pre-auction anxiety dreams morphed into planning out battles with dragon dreams.  and then wakefulness.

it’s probably time that i articulated something to myself properly, or at least made an attempt.  it’s a part of my life that’s a little fraught and i think helps me behave in a way that i hope is uncharacteristic – not brave and not kind, to say the least.

i know it’s usual for a group of friends of mixed sexes who have known each other for some time end up being ‘incestuous’ in a variety of permutations.  people pair up, swap partners (with or without notice), have unrequited secret desires, break up, reform, etc.  it’s not pretty and hurt feelings are inevitable, justified or not, but it’s the reality of pubescent life.  i have been guilty of participating myself, however much i might want to explain it away by pointing out time passed, etc.  and sometimes my feelings have gotten hurt.  and sometimes i have held grudges for longer than i should.

we’re adults.  i think that so much of being adult is learning to forgive, to understand that everyone has their own self-justifying internal narrative that is no less valid than yours, to remember that your subjective views (feelings of betrayal, resentment, etc) are not any more real or unreal than anyone else’s, and behaving accordingly.  and i’m still learning how to do this.  i think one of my main struggles is that there doesn’t seem to be any sort of accountability for when one person screws over another.  but what sort of accountability would i expect?  another part of being an adult is learning how to walk the fine line of concern and affection for others vs being able to mind your own damn business.  things left unspoken bother me, but it’s that shared agreement of silence that seems to hold a lot of things together.  i won’t bring up how you hurt me, or how the way and timing of you hurting me makes me wonder if there are other times that i don’t know about.  with one exception i have been good about not talking about that sort of thing to the person’s face… which doesn’t mean that i haven’t indulged in gossip and backbiting, and that’s a part of myself that i do not like and am not proud of.  it’s an extension of my own previous hypocrisy.

there are times, last spring especially, when i felt very abandoned by that group of friends.  not by individuals, necessarily, but the group as a whole.  i ended up on the wrong side somehow in a way that was out of my control, because of another person’s actions.  or at least, that’s what i tried to tell myself.  knowing my own history of judging (albeit mostly internally – is that better or worse?), of being hesitant to reach out (primarily out of fear of rejection), i knew even at the time that i wasn’t an innocent victim.  that i had made choices and that those choices had consequences.  i often felt this was unfair somehow – after all, others had made choices with consequences that affected me badly, choices that were more obviously hurtful – but different choices have different effects.  it’s unwise to expect some sort of tit for tat of sympathy, or for sympathy from others to be infinite when i know that it is far from that in myself.

the past year has been spent (wisely) expanding my territory, as it were.  i am no longer romantically involved with anyone in that particular group and – more important – have no latent desire to be.  i’ve gotten better – not great, but better – about not evaluating myself in terms of who will hang out with me when i want to hang out, about recognizing my own culpability in some regards in addition to recognizing what was truly out of my control.  (proximity, a long shared history of proximity, etc.)  i think that i’ve made some important strides in the past year and am overall a much happier person than i was last spring.  i’ve made new friends and new relationships.  i no longer have or indulge the urge to claw my skin off and hope/ fear that someone will notice.  but that doesn’t mean that i haven’t been petty and catty and resentful when i don’t really have a right to be.  and now that more of my life is in a more positive place, i don’t have an excuse for letting that part of myself stay the same.

1) this first:

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/04/26/sl-letter-of-the-day-help-an-arsehole-would-ya#comment-13479572

He feels less than satisfied? Jesus. This is part of what keeps legions of us from breeding. The knowledge that we will be going it alone, basically, because the men we know demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what exactly we sacrifice by undergoing a pregnancy. You mean I get to give up my beloved after work cocktails, many/most extracurricular sex, my sleep, bladder control, my currently incredibly fuckable body, control of my emotions, for at least 2 years, and definitely the rest of my life to gestate, nourish, and raise another human, and all you can think about is how you can talk me into letting you fuck an 18 year old? A fucking 18 year old? When I feel probably the least sexy and empowered and secure as I’ve ever felt in my life. Holy alimony. Here is flammable gas, insert dynamite.

This is why I’m never ever ever going to reproduce. I don’t want to give up all that, as awesome as I think raising humans is, as much credit as I give those rare amazing humans who do it well and fully, I just won’t. I’m not willing to do it alone, and biology and society dictate that it’s primarily my responsibility. Fuck that. I MAKE that baby in my own body, and I am still screwed afterwards? I should live on a cushion being fed grapes for the next year, with those French vagina-flexing classes so I can get back to normal sexuality and child-bearing capability afterward. How does that even sound like a reasonable plan?

frankly expresses a lot of my own hesitation for getting married/ having children.

the thing about people and cheating is that there is no real safety.  there are those who will swear up and down that they will never cheat, and they will believe it, and in the just right conflux of circumstance will anyway.  I don’t know if I could even fully discount myself from this group.  Past behavior is not an indicator.  Everyone is vulnerable.  we hope better for ourselves and for our partners, but we cannot know.  the lack of knowledge is where trust comes in, I know…

and I know that reality usually isn’t that bleak (except when it is).  but in terms of bringing a child into the world I would have to have absolute trust in my partner and really in the universe, and the latter is certainly not possible even if the former is.  it’s rare that I can see my worst fears so clearly articulated by someone else.

2) I watched “Inside Job” the other day and realized that I should have been outraged by the trajectory of the US financial system since before I was born.  So there’s that.

otherwise things have been good!  go read this book.

be brave and be kind

a difficult thing about living in the city – in any city, i think, at least it’s a problem here just as it has been in rome, and athens, and delhi, and kolkata – is homelessness.

(it feels selfish to talk about this, even, maybe ungrateful.  it is easy to forget that except by the grace of when i was born and to whom and a million other factors of things that did and did not happen to me, i could just as easily be sleeping under the interstate 2 blocks from my current apartment as those that i pass every day.  but it’s real, even if it makes me feel petty.)

i felt it first most strongly in delhi.  trying to not meet the eyes of people whose lives i could not imagine, who wanted something from me.  a dollar, an orange, whatever.  things that were easy enough to give until the other children (it was very often children) would see that i gave one child something and would swarm.  or in kolkata, when i made sort-of friends with a local girl of 10 or so who showed me a hotel when the one i had made a reservation with turned out to not exist.  i gave her an orange and she said, what i could really use is baby formula for my brother.  which seemed reasonable, so i went to the little corner store with her and a woman joined us who was her mother and the girl asked for formula, and for rice, and for millet… until i stopped her and she acted hurt.

the situation is not as bad here as in india, of course.  i do live in a part of the city and walk through downtown where the indigent gather, either to sleep or to ask for money during the day.  others camp out in front of the drug stores and grocery stores downtown to catch you both coming and going.  it makes sense.  in their position i would do the same.

but i keep my sunglasses on when i have them and music in my ears, and even when i don’t have them i walk like i do.  i make eye contact sometimes and smile more rarely – usually at those hocking “real change” – but i don’t stop.  usually i don’t have any cash.  when i do i still don’t stop.

a few months ago i was walking home from belltown in the dark and a woman asked me for change and i said no, still walking, and she screamed ‘bitch’ after me and then ‘fuck’ to the rest of the night.

i always feel torn.  on the one hand i wish i could help; on the other i know that the small supply of money that i gave would not help in any useful way.  on the one hand i pity them; on the other i know how possible it is for people to exaggerate, to claim veteranship, to use what i’d give them for drugs, etc etc etc.  (and even then, who am i to judge?  in their position i might easily do the same.)  and there is the deep persistent tide of feeling that i as an individual have the right to walk down the street and not have people ask me for things. in part because people can ask for things without asking a question – the catcallers are asking for attention, acknowledgment just as much as the homeless are asking me for money, and what money can buy (a night at the shelter, a piece towards the next hit, who am i to judge?  who am i to even recommend what they should do, considering how broken the resources we have are?).  and that makes me so fundamentally tired, people wanting things from me that i either can’t or don’t want to give them, people wanting things from me who have no idea who i am, only that i have something.

i can feel my heart get hard and that is difficult too.

what brought this on is a link to this project: Faces of Addiction.

which is startlingly beautiful in terms of photographic composition and brings up very strong and conflicting feelings in me.  (the man behind it, chris arnade, also has an interview here, which encourages those feelings.)  some of the comments articulate parts of them.  here’s my own attempt.

i gotta say, my first reaction was almost jealousy.  here’s a man who has found a way to not feel guilty.  an easy, artistic action that “raises awareness” and grants the subjects a certain, safe amount of agency (they can say no) without prescribing some sort of presumptuous antidote.

thinking more about it…

there’s first the simple fact that i don’t think that there’s any way that i could do this myself.  that’s male privilege for you – or at least the privilege of having the strength and body mass to appropriately defend yourself if push came to shove.

there’s second the fact that maybe the “raising awareness” goal with no recommendation for change that would bind up systemic wounds is not actually that useful to the people he documents.  it’s also pretty damn patronizing.  (on the other hand, change must start with awareness, and we’re not all lobbyists and legislatures.  specific stories and images can sway minds, make problems real.)

third, it conflates addiction with homelessness, which is not necessarily the case – and that’s an easy shortcut that allows people to dismiss those in need more easily.  it’s certainly not a 100% correlation (or even close), and there’s not a set-in-stone route of causation either.

i don’t know if there’s a correct answer.  people may have considered charles dickens exploitative back in the day, although he had at least walked the walk before he talked the talk.  (does that make a difference?)  that doesn’t change the fact that his writing was a tremendous influence in implementing essential social changes to help the most needy.  it of course lined his own pockets nicely too.

this is a problem in a lot of art.  telling other people’s stories, particularly when the power dynamic is unbalanced.  a white banker takes pictures and jots town a few sentences and through the magic of the internet doesn’t have to convince a publisher of anything.  a white woman writes about african-american housemaids during jim crow and creates ‘the help’.  what is exploitation?  what is just telling an interesting story?  what is telling a story that needs to be told?

to return to the simple, selfish question of- how do i stop feeling bad about the privilege i possess that i did nothing to earn and cannot hope to universally equalize?

do what you can.  be brave and be kind.  and don’t be stupid.

optimism

i don’t particularly believe anymore in the christian version of easter- at least not exclusively. it is a sunny day here, starting to get warm – a miracle in itself! – and here more than anywhere else a sunny day in spring that is not punctuated by wind or rain ir hail is such a relief that it is palpable in the air. we all survived another season of grey.

so i do believe in resurrection. it’s one of the oldest stories, mirroring what in the world survived winter. it’s just… the resurrection of a hebrew prophet is no more or less believable than the resurrection of osiris and balder and adonis and all the millions other spring/ fertility gods that die young and come back with the tilt in the earth’s axis. it is no more or less interesting than the predictable miracle of infinitely tiny ginko leaves emerging, and the seattle phenomenon of all babies and dogs and blindingly pale legs in the neighborhood being taken out for an airing. it is no more or less extraordinary than the simple crazy excess of fertility, the overcompensation of being close to dead all winter resulting in almost scandalous blooms of flowers exposing themselves (fuck me! want me! grind up against me and drink me, pollinators!) and exploding their seed into the air so that our eyes and nose run with it.

spring is enough of a miracle for me.

is there a word…

is there a word for not being certain if you should be uncertain?

In one house, a…

In one house, an elderly woman screamed: “May God kill the only son of Karzai, so he feels what we feel.”

grey

it’s been a mild winter, certainly the easiest since i’ve moved up here.  the weather has something to do with it.  a staple relationship + being in a much better place mental health-wise has a lot more i suspect.

but that doesn’t mean that the grey doesn’t still get to me sometimes.  today it was raining and there wasn’t much to do and somehow i couldn’t think about things ever being different.  grey wet monotony.

i fear that i’m allowing myself to become a boring person.  work has something to do with it.  when it’s busy i don’t have the energy outside of work to write, and when it’s not busy i’m too out of shape.  and there’s so much more relaxing to get done.

on the one hand there’s the voice telling me ‘hurry hurry hurry you don’t have a moment to waste to get your life started,’ and on the other there is the voice telling me ‘your life has already started, and that doesn’t determine much about where you will be and what you’ll be doing 5 years from now.  maybe even 1 year from now.’

the simultaneous feeling of time slipping away and the realization as i grow older how many life-changing events are truly unanticipated.  am i giving myself an excuse to not be as in control as i’d like?

it’s difficult to articulate this, beginning to see how winding paths are, and as such how difficult it is to commit to any direction in particular at this time, knowing that it will end up being something completely different.

a crocus has started to sprout.  i saw the first robin (migratory thrush) of spring, but it had been flattened by a window or a car or a combination of the two.  spring will come.  what will come with it?

saw the film ‘kama sutra’ recently, which had been shot primarily at the palace in jaipur where i walked only a few weeks before a bomb went off in a marketplace nearby, close to 4 years ago now.  nostalgia upon watching it, and wariness too.  the last line of the film is sticking with me.  ’my heart was as open as the sky.’

scattered.  maybe these are unfocused times.  maybe i’m not paying attention to the appropriate locus.

gogolplex continued

“It has, no doubt, happened to you, some time or another, to hear a voice calling you by name, which simple people explain as a soul grieving for a human being and calling him; and after that, they say, death follows inevitably. I must admit I was always frightened by that mysterious call. I remember that in childhood I often heard it. Sometimes suddenly someone behind me distinctly uttered my name. Usually on such occasions it ws a very bright and sunny day; not one leaf in the garden was stirring; the stillness was deathlike; even the grasshopper left off churring for a moment; there was not a soul in the garden. But I confess that if the wildest and most tempestuous night had lashed me with all the fury of the elements, alone in the middle of an unpenetrable forest, I should not have been so terrified as by that awful stillness in the midst if a cloudless day. I usually ran out of the garden, hardly able to breathe, and was only reassured when I met some person, the sight of whom dispelled the terrible spiritual loneliness.”

–Nikolai Gogol, Old-World Landowners

a strange little passage, tucked almost at the end of a short story which is mostly about an old couple’s love for food, but then also heartbreak, and aging suddenly, and ending with a chilling little aside from the author who has otherwise played almost no part in the story. it’s oddly personal, oddly relatable in the way of childhood terrors, and somehow casts a darker edge across the rest of the story, that while sad is relatively benign. there’s more serious existential melancholy in that passage, and the brief return to the end of the narrative is strange, and the ending somehow stranger. a trailing off rather than an ending. music from another room. is that eliot?

it reminds me of the last line in ‘peter and wendy’: “where children are yooung, and innocent, and heartless.” a chilling unexpected twist that redefines everything that has come before.

gogol was fucking nuts and right now i can’t get enough of his distorted little world.

remarkably at peace with the past and present just now.

top 5 songs for 2011

these are songs that i heard for the first time this year, rather than songs that came out this year.  in no particular order:

Adele, “Rolling in the Deep” (video is pretty good too)

TV on the Radio, “Second Song” (also a decent video)

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, “Home” (official video is a hipster’s wet dream and unembeddable – sticking with this one)

The Books, “The Story of Hip-Hop”

John Powell, “Test-Drive” from How to Train Your Dragon

2011 has been a pretty weird year for everyone as far as i can tell.  the first six months were pretty dark for me personally.  the second half of the year has been a lot kinder.

i got no more insight.