Defensiveness

I think we are all defensive people, in one way or another.

Defensive against what? 

Against pain? Perhaps.

More likely: defensive against disintegration, which is a kind of pain, but one that is rarely encountered because we tend to be very good at defending ourselves against it.

I steal an example from Nietzsche: the ascetic. Who wants to bar his or herself from pleasures, whether they be sexual, sensual, or communal? Only someone who has found that the somewhat turbulent waters that lead to these shores are not worth the rafting. 

But this declamation "not worth" is a very peculiar style of thinking. Very rarely do we get the chance to cooly weigh two options and decide which path we shall take by an examination of the pros and cons of each. You know as well as I with what haste we generally make decisions in our hearts, after which we give words to explain the 'reasons' behind the decision, though no real 'reasoning' had been done on the matter.

One who resolves against involving oneself in any pleasure of life has made this decision not because she reasons that she will be 'better off' without taking the risks that are involved, but because she has a primal psychic defense working in her that fears possible dissolution. 

Dissolution of what? Of her 'self'. 

But what is this 'self', that she should be so afeard of expressing her love for someone or allowing herself to become vulnerable and open to scrutiny in a public situation? 

Nobody quite knows why one's 'self' becomes so important during adolescence and thereafter. Children seem to have no problem making a fool of themselves in public, but what is curious - they are almost always regarded with adoration for it. 

Have you ever had a child say hello to you in public that you have been too shy to say something back to? I have.

Was it because I feared looking like a child? Not consciously... but perhaps somewhere deep in my psyche I felt that it would have compromised this vague 'self' that I am thinking on now. How could it have? Eyes would have regarded me differently than if I had remained quiet, nobody noticing that I had interacted with this child, and the child's attention itself being soon turned away to something new. Why would I have been reluctant to share in the communal experience offered, here and in so many other instances?

This is a little embarrassing - to think that I tried to write something that would apply to people generally, but which quickly digressed into something purely autobiographical. I think it was inspired by Jane's post on something similar. 

There are very little realistic grounds for fear in most social situations. Why, then, are they so difficult to overcome? Standards of maturity seem to have stifled us. Is maturity always had be the relinquishing of freedoms we had as a child, freedom to say, do, or think certain questionable things? Is there a kind of maturity that can be well blended with the vivacity, freedom, and trust that we find in children?

Am I thinking about the question all wrong?

Time to Think

Are all questions about human life really solved?

Have I really become that insane? To think that there is nothing left to think?

In 3,000 years of recorded history, has humankind given us any reason to think that we will one day live in a utopia of harmony and happiness? I don't think so. There will always be some creep who will mess it up because he was selfish.

So what are my life goals, having this axiom in mind? I want to reach out to the people I think are beautiful --- not in body, but in spirit.

Thoughts and Thoughts

I am a little paranoid after reading some of my poems today and realizing how dark and insane they sound.

That love poem I posted was a bit of a change (at least it's in iambic pentameter) BUT!

Does anyone understand what I am saying anymore? Sometimes I'm afraid that I am just speaking nonsense to myself and imagining that it is something profound (the first sign of insanity).

I don't mean 'does anyone find me intelligible anymore?' but 'Am I someone who people can look up to as a model of diligence, intelligence, and munificence?'

Okay, I'm kind of joking --- BUT!

Last night I dreamt that Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and a close friend of mine died. Robert Hass (former poet laureate and professor at Berkeley) did a memorial speech, but was so outraged against life for the death of Obama that he smashed a bunch of flowers against the podium and collapsed.

Harold Bloom says something like this about outrage: moments of outrage constitute the steps on the way towards death, which cannot be faced adequately. A justification for life must be invented while in the midst of such outrages.

A justification for life? I seemed to have lost a serious one a while ago.

Was it the drugs or was it that Rhetoric class I took with that Heideggerian woman that so confuzzled me?

Let me speak plainly: the only thing I am working on right now is a fantasy novel. I enjoy creating a narrative out of these many romantic images I have had in my head for some time.

A Love Poem

For the birds in summer have not yet calmed

for my heart bids itself rise up and speak

no more. Every day a cherished excess

rides away from me as the broken stork

had done that night on the canal, when I,

I, bent my head to yours and whispered dream

words like etchings on a sandbox ditched

on the beach, scrawled hard into the plastic

by the millioned debris of boulders

too huge to fathom as they first stood

in the early days of the earth, and strewn

with lava. There did my un-agony prevail

and I fell for you again. As always.

And your music stays with me forever.

Stories from around the World

Since it is a habit of mine to search in google for random phrases in quotes that come to my head (examples include: "My husband is a patriot", "OMG I love Shakespeare", and "Onan is my hero") and since I generally find results on people's blogs, personal websites, and forum posts that reveal strikingly honest and human outpourings of thought and feeling, I thought it would be meet to document some of these on my blog.

Here is "Twinkle Toes" a "Ballroom Diva" from La Quinta, CA who I found when searching for "child seeing someone die" (without quotes this time - I was doing some research on how children see death):

I had never lost anyone I was particularly close to and when someone I knew died it really didn't affect me too much because I wasn't close to them. However, when my brother was hit head on and killed by a guy passing people over double yellow lines on a curve, it really affected me. To this day it still affects me. I miss him so much. There really aren't any words that can describe how much I miss him. The other thing is when I see my other brother or my parents struggling with his death, that hurts too. But we do have some hope because of our faith. We absolutely believe we will see him again some day, so even though we are heartbroken and desperately sad because he is gone from this Earth and we can't see him here anymore, we know that this is only temporary.