Filed under: attirance, self-work, vie quotidienne | Tags: friends, life story, love, MEcosystem, nucular holocaust, self-work
EDIT: I had some fine words last night about cultivating my lopin before going and throwing myself down in anyone else’s garden. I ignored that advice, and aye am paying. How many times do I need to hear and see each individual lesson? How long is it going to take? I’m… angry with myself now, and am going to go process that. But this is what I wrote before…
Montaigne discusses in his Essais the concept of a lopin – that is, one’s patch of ground, or the world which immediately surrounds a person.
Il entreprendra toutes-fois, pour faire courir ce petit lopin, d’escrire toute la physique.
So… one must cultivate one’s own patch of ground – understand the things particular to a locality – before venturing out to try new worlds. Yes, Montaigne, I agree with you.
I’ve not been cultivating my own lopin. I have not undertaken to run my small patch of ground and learn and describe its properties. I’ve been hard at work in the world, undertaking enterprises of great pitch and moment and not understanding a bit of what I’ve been doing… because I haven’t the basis of knowledge gained in my own garden. I’ve tried to study the evolution of a forest without knowing a blessed thing about one single tree.
Enough with the metaphors. What I mean to say is that I’ve not been tending to my own affairs. I have thrust myself deep in the affairs of others without having understood my own. And I have – as is only natural – made a hash of them.
Now… to cultivate my own garden. To see what grows there. To develop a natural affinity for the ground. One cannot be comfortable going abroad who does not have a strong base at home. For that is to be cut off from the world. But I’ve gone out into the world and have been cut off.
I do not regret it. For – as Paris was to be – it was a learning experience, which has made me… start the very, very, very long road of sitting and processing all of this. All of what I had laid aside, thinking it unimportant. Virtue does not grow overnight. In anyone. Much as I or anyone may hope. But it does not help to try to pull at the tender shoots to have them grow larger. They will not. And one damages the plant as one does it.
Virtue is a slow-growth plant. A bonsai tree. Well… not quite. But slow. And yet I am not starting from fallow ground. I am starting from ground which has been ill-used and much trodden. To cultivate it will therefore be harder. But not impossible. For anyone.
I wish to give comfort where I can, and to help where I can. But if I cannot help myself, how is that possible? Philosopher, heal thyself. And though I resented it when Stef mentioned it last night, he’s right, damn him. It’s early for me yet. Though I can share what insights I’ve had… it falls to me to till my own ground first.
So, this mistake was my fault. Mea maxima culpa, for god knows I’ve had this lesson several times before. But I always… made the excuse that those were bad men. Yet I was ready enough to believe in their virtue at the time. This is not a bad man. Dear lord, he is not. And yet… the lesson is the same. And the lesson is also that it did not matter the type of person. That’s the lesson: the universality of this. How universal, no matter the potentiality of either party.
Reminds me of a line from Holiday. “How does your garden grow, Case?”
Heh. Linda didn’t know how hers even grew. “You mean what I’ve not been doing: days in, please, years out.”
Alright. Enough. Lecture is almost over. Then to go speak of Vesalius and Copernicus. Then grocery shopping. Then home.
I’ve not touched a piano in two weeks.
Filed under: attirance, self-work | Tags: friends, love, MEcosystem, music, self-work, youtube
Yes, this was both cowardly and passive aggressive. Which is the thought I’d come to by the end… and decided to post anyway. Nice.
Oh, and here’s a great song from 1928:
Someone upstairs is playing Fur Elise. Beethoven. Fitting, I suppose. There was no music in the car that night on the way home from Tom’s. I couldn’t have stood it.
How am I feeling now? Nascent closure – so delicate now that if I breathed on it, I’m not sure what would happen. Like the feeling I felt after walking out of that room and leaving mother – calling my name – behind me. And I didn’t want her to run after me. And she didn’t. She saw.
Ma fin est ma commencement.
I got a call from mother, incidentally, tonight. Deleted the msg after the first word confirmed it was her. She hasn’t called since my birthday. Good to be able to go 23 days without hearing from her. Eventually there will be a longer and longer interval between calls.
Oh, but am I processing as I write? The Council is pleased. They didn’t want to be saddled with my choice. For he was never theirs. Only… oh, that pern in a gyre part that doesn’t want to see. I must go talk with that part. But my heart has wept no blood. It knows what is good for it, and ill. And it is not cruel. It cannot be that cruel.
Gather me into the artifice of eternity…
(Note: half the metaphors in this are conceits on the one act play Salome, by Oscar Wilde.)
I was going to write a post about Gunthar – and someone else – and found I lacked the vocation. For I was going to be demonstrative again. Neither understood, or understands. But it’s not my responsibility to make them understand. Philosopher, heal thyself. Heal thyself first.
So… why did (and do) I feel such a need to rehabilitate people? Why do I feel responsible for their health? And not just in the “let me light your lantern with this match” way – but the “I will drag you every goddamned step of the way through this horrid dark forest, no matter what the personal cost to me is” way? Why? Why do I want to destroy myself in a gambit which – as I am all to painfully aware from a long experience – will not even serve to heal them? Why do I want to throw my life and energies away for something which I “want” but can’t ever achieve anyway?
Why spend so much mental energy and anguish trying to carry people? To make them understand? Why do I have to be the martyr and fight other people’s battles? Why, Joan? Why do you do this? Why do we do this?
Is it what he made me happy by saying… that it was because we know his worth? No… it cannot be. For, to quote Austen, we “have loved many a stupider person.” We’ve tried to drag many a worse person towards the sort of salvation we wished for ourselves. It doesn’t have anything to do with their worth, or we should feel this way about every worthy person we found. No… this is a more specific pathology.
Why Donnie? Why Gunthar? Why… the latest person who pegs me lower than the level of his evil bitch of an ex-girlfriend? Why the need to seek reassurance that I’m better than the women who have used and discarded them. And not only that… why the need to interpose myself in there?
“Look… I am so much better. You must love me! Let me drag you from the depths of despair. You can only think of the fake feelings that those women engendered? Well… I can’t compete with the euphoria of fusion. But let me dig around here and find… um… what do you count as a virtue? Um… hold on… The sex would be great. And, uh… I don’t like to get into screaming arguments. And, uh… look, could you stop thinking about your ex for a minute and focus on me? Wait, you’ll do anything to avoid having a conversation with me? You’ll just stop talking to me and talk to someone else while I’m sitting here like a little puppy dog hanging on your every word? I can’t do anything while we’re talking. I can only sit here and listen. And give you my full attention. Every part of me is focused on you. And you’re spurning me. Wait, no… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to criticize you when you hurt me and show me your opinion of me by doing things you know must be hurtful. I mean, I’m here. I won’t reject you. Even though you’re telling me through your actions that you’re not a good person. I mean… look at me. No, don’t look at the fact that I want you and the fact that low self-esteem is what’s causing that. I mean… no, come on… Gunthar! Donnie! No… no, I’ll be here. Since you’re the best I can get. Go on idealizing them. Selene, Misty. Think of only the good times. Of the euphoria of the beginning of your relationships. And then tell me in minute detail how they went wrong and how they hurt you. And make me compete with that. Make me compete with evil. That’s the standard. I have to beat their best.”
Why? Why?! Surely that is not something I deserve. Surely I do not deserve to spend another night like that ever again. Surely I deserve more than running after men who are not virtuous and thus incapable of the kind of relationship I so desperately yearn for. The kind of relationship that I feel I have to convince them is possible, because I don’t quite believe it myself.
And so, like Salome, I take my vengeance. Not by having my beloved’s head cut off… but by letting them cling. Being cruel. Being a shining example of the only kind of woman it’s possible for them to get – a neurotic woman of abysmally low self-esteem. Being the opposite of what I say is possible. If a woman with the potentiality for such good is willing to jump down into the mire and race your ex-girlfriend to the bottom… what kind of love is possible in this world? My vengeance on them. But it is not meant for them. The seeds of destruction weren’t planted by them. But we have our vengeance on each other, by reinforcing… oh, you know by now.
God. This is NOT all that is possible in life.
I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. Suffer me to kiss thy mouth.
And meanwhile, the Syrian prince is begging me – the princess, fairer than any dove – to turn from the visage of the man I lust after, who worships another and can’t be turned. Oh noble prince of Syria… whom I’m spurning and giving up in my pursuit of the unworthy… good god, I’ve been blinded.
With parents like Herod and Herodias, it’s not a surprise.
So, last night I told a friend the story of my last night with Tom. It was a terrible situation. I hated myself and all the world – but most of all myself. The last part of the story has me returning to my newly-leased apartment and sitting on the futon thinking the words “I’m free… now what do I do with the rest of my life?”
I wasn’t feeling… much of anything that night. I felt real anger (self-directed – I had him take me in anger earlier that night, and could feel some interesting bruises starting to form, and my bad(er) hip starting to dislocate) and despair and… no. Rage. Rage and despair on the way home. But at the end, I was quiescent sitting on that couch at 2am with no lights on in the house and Ruth asleep in her crate.
I wanted it to be easy. I wanted not to have to process anything. I sat there, expecting to cry. No tears came. I expected that I wanted – I thought that I should want to want – Tom to call and apologize. But no. I’d left him asleep. Sated. Unable to move, really. I was always amused that though he was a prince of a lover with everyone else, he couldn’t keep up with me. That’s why he needed mistresses, I suppose: they didn’t leave him incapacitated for 30 minutes afterwards each time. True story. But way TMI.
So… what did I want. I told him, during that conversation, that… well… I wanted to tell him that I wanted more. And I did. But no… what I wanted from him was his understanding. I wanted him to see what more there was. What more the world had to offer besides dynastic marriage and a stream of mistresses who would let him do degrading things to them. I explained what I thought I’d found. Look, Tom, you’ve read Rand: the world isn’t like that either. It’s not the world of your parents – fancy parties, country clubs, senatorial appointments, mistresses, botox, drinking yourself into oblivion – and it’s not that juvenile bizarro-world of Rand’s producers. Look… love is possible. Even if it’s not with me. You’ve never told me you loved me except once. And I didn’t believe it. We don’t… love each other, Tom. But come with me as a friend into that world that I see? Come as a fellow traveler? You’re in hell. This is hell. And the gate to paradise is deeper into hell. But think what’s on the other side, and come with me! Oh, please come with me, for I am scared to go alone.
I was jealous of his mistresses for the longest time. Because I thought that him having sex with his mistresses meant that he loved them. But of course he didn’t. He wasn’t capable of love. Which… is why he couldn’t come with me. Why I couldn’t save him. Not that I can save anyone else that doesn’t want to be saved, of course – and if the people want to be saved, they’ll save themselves. They’ll do everything in their goddamned power to save themselves.
But… I didn’t realize at the time why I was jealous. Or I did, but I dismissed it. Denied my feelings. For the entire thing was a performance. Our relationship. I showed forbearance. Didn’t raise my voice. Got angry… but didn’t yell, didn’t call names. Didn’t let him do those things either. It wasn’t worth it. Go see Alisha, Tom, and when you’ve finished dumping all of your emotional sewage on her, come back and we’ll quaff that last drop together. In fond remembrance of me.
I wanted it to be easy. I didn’t want to have to feel anger. Jealousy. Hurt. Rage. Exasperation. For he was – is – a man of boundless talent… and he went the other way. Six months after I made my offer, he married his principal mistress. A year after I made my offer, he joined the army. He sent me an email last September. I didn’t know either of these things. He assumed I did. “I’m finishing up training in Arizona, and will be going to Japan with my wife.” Alright, Tom. I’m not jealous any more.
One can’t be jealous of the dead.
I wanted… not to have to think. What had been modeled to me as the image of a “successful” marriage. Strong (that is, fundamentally weak) man brings home the bacon, sits down, and shuts up. Wife – perhaps pretty and amiable in her youth, but in her age a horrible, insecure shrew – fries it up. Two children – an heir and a spare, please – a dog, and a white picket fence. Summers in Maine. Good morning, Mrs. Senator.
Oh, but that isn’t what I thought I was getting. I didn’t think love was possible. I thought that’s all there was. All that one could hope to achieve. Wealth, good standing in the community, and tolerance – not love – in the union. I’d seen Tom’s first wife strive for more and fail. Or, no. She started out as a horrible, insecure shrew. She wasn’t intelligent enough to dissemble. And she wanted him back. He treated her like dirt, and she wanted him back.
I ignored all this. Ignored my feelings. Ignored intuition. Ignored… reality. The facts. The truth. Empirical evidence. Until one day I couldn’t. I stood in the dining room, looking out the back window watching him smoke and read a fantasy novel. The only time I could ever really get his attention was when he went out to smoke. (Parallels, parallels, my dear.) But I had suddenly no desire to try to win his attention. I went outside and told him I was leaving for a while. He gave me his charming smile. Which didn’t reach his eyes.
Oh, I wanted… to stay where I was. Treading water. Treading the shit that I’d been forced to swim in from childhood. That sweet walking death. But I knew – all the time I knew – what I was denying.
No bitterness, no recriminations. The relationship with Tom put me exactly where I needed to be. Without that – those long months of feeling horrid all the time – I couldn’t be here now. I’d passed the lifeline before I got involved with him. Was reading StR and LRC quite religiously. I knew who Stef was, obliquely. This was in his very, very first days. So the teacher was setting up his classroom, but this particular student wasn’t ready.
So, love is possible. And it took walking through that particular hellfire for me to realize it. So is it processed? Past and done? Well… more processed than it was. I know now what I did – and what every relationship I entered into was set up to do – and I’m watching.
But yet… I still act as though I want something that – in truth – I can’t want. Still searching for a particular kind of validation… or… anti-validation. But this isn’t a Tom-connected thing.
Oh, and it’s taken me all this time and writing to realize that. Put the suitcase of Tom-memories back on the shelf, oh my dear ones. That baggage is out, and all that remains is the empty suitcase with some shreds of memory clinging to it. The next case to unpack – and I’d left it alone, for I did not think it important – is the one with the Gunthar-memories. The man is unimportant. Oh, so unimportant. But what drove me to him is. Oh, my.
I’m back there. I’m in Gunthar-world. Back four years ago in the Tom interregnum listening to him talk about his ex-girlfriend Selene as he played computer games. With the thought in the back of my mind of “Yes, she was an evil bitch who hated you. But I am so much better. I’m here. Reach out for me!”
And I’m staking my reputation and my happiness and my self-esteem on one sign of affection. Only the Sara that is telling me to stay far away is… myself. Oh, Gunthar, Gunthar. Who was never mine. I still want to show you that I am better than Selene and worthy of your love. She’s hurt you… but I’m here. I’ll deal with what you cannot. No… with what you will not. I will do it… so long as you will show me I am worthy of your love. And when you will not speak to me I’ll go half mad. For all of my pitiful “self-esteem” is yours.
I am so sorry.
Filed under: FDR, attirance, self-work, vie quotidienne | Tags: FDR, love, school, self-work, vie quotidienne, youtube
So, I re-watched one of Stef’s very old videos this morning, after having lost my appetite for breakfast by something else I read this morning. And I realized… what the hell am I doing? Or, no. Those are self-abusive terms.
If 90-year-old me could look back and see me now, and see one particular choice I am making now… would she be pleased? Would she advise me to put so much energy into achieving something that is now quite impossible (and actually anti-possible, and made MORE anti-possible by my actions)? Would she say “Yes, continue on doing what you’re doing” or would she say “No, give it up. Give this up. Whatever comes later is fine, but right now move on and do something with this time!”
She realizes, as I did not, that what I’m working towards is not only not what I want, but actually ANTI-what-I-want. It is not only not getting me where I want to go, but it’s actively preventing me from ever getting there!
She would, of course, say the latter – to give it up. And tell me to continue on working to build virtue for myself, and not to lose stomach over anything else that I might be reading or anything that’s going on with anyone else. Because not only am I wasting time now, I’m making myself waste more time in the future – time I’ll need to spend catching up to where I could have been if I wasn’t going backwards now. In some areas, I’ve made progress. In other areas, I seem to be going in retrograde. (Retrograde… well, it’s forward motion that looks like backward motion. Actually… that might be a useful metaphor. Because I needed a little spell of this backward motion in order to propel me forward.)
That makes… so much sense. And I’m feeling relaxed and at ease and in good spirits this morning, despite having woken up at 6:30. (I went to bed at 9:30 after having consumed quite a bit of champagne, so it’s not like I missed out on any sleep.) I have a logic test in an hour. Just fine with me. And two French compositions due. Great! And a crisis meeting with my academic adviser. Lovely. This is not that sort of irresponsible happiness of the condemned. This is that feeling of puissance. Of ability to do and accomplish what needs to be done and accomplished.
I’ve been so stressed out lately because I’ve been fighting to make the “wrong” thing into right action. I’ve been fighting against myself. Stressing the system. But fundamentally, my selves are not at war. We’re all one. It’s those “vested interests” that are duking it out with my selves and causing so much sturm und drang. Ah, vested interests.
THAT is what I was buying in that dream, I think. What I’d already spent so much money on without realizing it. What prevented me from taking that heady wine of philosophy, or… well-being generally. Vested interests.
Here’s the video. An oldy, but a goody.
So, I’m trying something new! In order to expose my dear friends to some of the books that I have chiefly loved, I’m going to be doing a series of short readings. These readings will focus on passages which are pertinent to the philosophical discussion we’re in – whether in response to a podcast, to a post on one of your blogs, or to things that I’m otherwise talking about here. I’ll give a little synopsis of the book up to that passage, and then read it. Will try to keep these under 15 minutes in length.
So, let me know what you think, of both the idea and the book!
Jane Eyre has been one of my very favorite books since the age of 8. It’s a very Christian piece, having been written in the 1840s, but this passage contains no traces of Christianity. It pertains to the nature of love, jealousy, and virtue. I read it yesterday evening as a little mini-break from Just Poor, and I wanted to share it with you. :)
Filed under: attirance, self-work, voice blog | Tags: books, friends, love, MEcosystem, self-work, voice blog
PLEASE listen to this two-parter, my dear friends. I think I’ve made a real breakthrough here as far as seeing some of the fucking evil, insidious templates that are at work within my own mind – and maybe yours as well. I wasn’t originally going to post this… but it’s powerful, and I want to share it. Take a look. The first part is what’s been cooking around in my mind from listening to Stef’s 5-part series on ambivalence – specifically the ambivalence I feel in one relationship in my life, and the origins of that feeling. The second part is what started cooking in my head after an extremely illuminating conversation I had with another friend. I realized – with his invaluable help – exactly what template was most contributing to this feeling of ambivalence, and just how fucking far down the rabbit hole of “love = anxiety management” goes.
Ambivalence and Anxiety Management – part 1
The Insidious Template – part 2
Part 2 also contains an excerpt from Jane Eyre. Actually, it’s a wonderful MEcosystem book. Jane’s “Conscience” and “Passion” voices speak to her often. This is the original MEcosystem, 1840s style. But there’s entirely too much god in the work. I only realized that a couple of months ago when I first re-read it with my atheist, rationalist, empiricist eyes. It was my favorite book when I was a kid. Meh. :)
Sunrise is in about 5 hours – it is 54 minutes into Sunday. The way I’m feeling now, I could stay up to greet that sunrise. But what happens out there is nothing to what is happening in here. So, suns “in russet mantle clad,” I’ll swap you for any late Saturday night. The sunrise is in here. :)
BTW, I accidentally deleted a post which had this excellent review of Holiday appended to it. C’mon, folks, you owe it to yourself to watch it. James did, and he liked it!
