understand hell. sartre style.
this link is to "No Exit" , an hour and 23 minutes of really amazing writing.
no exit works, but so too would perhaps this:
...Hell is Other People...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mshvqdva0vYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mshvqdva0vY
September 12, 2012
September 9, 2012
What do we become
Hello Readers in the Distant Future, again...
I'm back. I was thinking about you today, and wondering about your intelligence--is it "artificial", or "natural"? Mostly again, I'm wondering how it is we have evolved, and what, as you read this, we are like: Do we focus only on efficiency, and production outcomes, or do we spend some of our time wondering interesting things? Do we have imagination, and creativity? Do we toy with questions when there may not be one answer, but shades of speculation and opinion?
I wish I could have the answers to these questions--because in some sense, the answers would provide clues about how to live today.
In our future, is it all about the moment that is, or do we seek some sort of greater overarching truth, or purpose to existing? We have a mix of approaches around here, now. But regardless of which attitude a person takes in life, it is this questioning, this seeking, that distinguishes the human race from "lesser" species. People are understood to have the ability to reason in their decision making, through the use of logic to map their thinking. Economists may say that people do not act rationally, but that is a different discussion. Reason and rationality are not interchangeable.
Merged with that questioning is the fact that we raise our children to the extreme--we do not toss them from their nests (birds) or spawn and swim (fish)--our babies are born completely incapable of doing much of anything, and must be cared for by their parents until they are presumed capable of using their innate ability to reason. (Our babies have been known to rely upon their mothers until they are in their 50's.) In our prolonged raising of our kids, we have a lot of time to think about what we want them to come away with, and in this context many parents try to think about and distill and make manifest the very essence of some theory of "upbringing". And I read something recently along these lines, which made me happy and sad--and made me think of you, Future Me.
The article had been sparked by a conversation the writer had had, in which was discussed what the group anticipated would be the wisdom that they, in their ripe old ages, would wish could actually have been passed down to their children, and been accepted. The writer outlining some of his response to the question is one I consider to be an absolute power-thinker. He possesses a stellar intellect and a curiosity the magnitude of which cannot be adjectivized (by the time you are reading this that may actually be a word. Here and now, I just made it up.) He is burst open to questions and seeks answers, on a massive scale. And he is an extremely driven person, and the drive is: question. go past the common boundaries.
As one of the three things he discussed, he stated, (and I paraphrase), that though the young may believe that life is not valuable without preferred features such as geographic location, life partner, or career, he would like his children to know that they will in fact adapt to situations poorer than they had hoped for, and without most of what the now-young person treasures.
I respect him so...ah the pain! This perspective is very upsetting. I often find him not just right, but profoundly and deeply right--, and in this case, I either disagree, or I want to disagree. I haven't decided which, yet. Any response to this question is completely subjective, and there is no one right answer--but still, it was crushing to me: the surprising amount of acceptance of, and resignation to the sometimes less than satisfactory outcomes of important individual decisions--the ones that each of us make in our lifetimes. And that he would advocate the transmission of an understanding that, even when it is obvious that a decision is no longer the best choice, a person can and will adapt to the situation, and be OK, and one need not seek change, because good enough is good enough... . ugh. I may be wrong but I read this as his wanting his children to learn to accept the choices that they at one point made, for all of their time, and learn to live with OK and be OK with it.
I hope I misunderstood.
Because I think this is fine for some people to say, but not him. He and his questions simply breathe potential, and so why does he admit stuntedness into his perspective, as natural, or acceptable, or fine. Of course we can adapt. But should we, really? Is it a more noble or cleaner course of a life lived? Is it better somehow, easier or smoother, and then if he thinks yes to any of these, how does that work--perhaps less external turmoil, but what happens to a person inside? Accepting OK rather than striving for better than that...and why, again? I suppose his answer is that what happens to a person inside is that they adapt. I do not like this answer.
(This is almost un-American!, I say, half in jest. But, it is rather German, in my experience. We'll save that--another day, another missive from me.)
Because he is writing, in his article, about ideas that he considers both wise and of such import that he wishes it were possible that his children actually learn them, I have to conclude that this belief is a product of his reasoning, and not just a flash of momentary defeat. In fact, he does not see it as defeat. He sees it as a fact. Just: that. And again: oh no! (Of three points he made, I should say, only one was upsetting--and another one contradicted it, which causes in me a slim glimmer of relaxed muscles: that his argument was rather more sophistry than not). In thinking about it, Future Beings, Future Me, the post was pretty much a poem. It was beautiful, painful, and answered fewer questions than it raised--at least in me.
But... what does it mean for us? In the end, did we adapt?...and why did we adapt, when there were options, and adaptation was not really a matter of environmental pressure?... In that market, in our long lives, did we stop taking each choice and deciding along the way if it was working or not, and then acting on the considered answer? Did we eventually accept status quo? How do you all live; what is going on?! Do you even experience dissatisfaction, and if so, is it considered OK?!?
These are questions with no answer right now. Was he on the right track, as was so often the case? Oh. This is what I wish I knew about our future.
But he asked that question later, in a different article altogether.
I'm back. I was thinking about you today, and wondering about your intelligence--is it "artificial", or "natural"? Mostly again, I'm wondering how it is we have evolved, and what, as you read this, we are like: Do we focus only on efficiency, and production outcomes, or do we spend some of our time wondering interesting things? Do we have imagination, and creativity? Do we toy with questions when there may not be one answer, but shades of speculation and opinion?
I wish I could have the answers to these questions--because in some sense, the answers would provide clues about how to live today.
In our future, is it all about the moment that is, or do we seek some sort of greater overarching truth, or purpose to existing? We have a mix of approaches around here, now. But regardless of which attitude a person takes in life, it is this questioning, this seeking, that distinguishes the human race from "lesser" species. People are understood to have the ability to reason in their decision making, through the use of logic to map their thinking. Economists may say that people do not act rationally, but that is a different discussion. Reason and rationality are not interchangeable.
Merged with that questioning is the fact that we raise our children to the extreme--we do not toss them from their nests (birds) or spawn and swim (fish)--our babies are born completely incapable of doing much of anything, and must be cared for by their parents until they are presumed capable of using their innate ability to reason. (Our babies have been known to rely upon their mothers until they are in their 50's.) In our prolonged raising of our kids, we have a lot of time to think about what we want them to come away with, and in this context many parents try to think about and distill and make manifest the very essence of some theory of "upbringing". And I read something recently along these lines, which made me happy and sad--and made me think of you, Future Me.
The article had been sparked by a conversation the writer had had, in which was discussed what the group anticipated would be the wisdom that they, in their ripe old ages, would wish could actually have been passed down to their children, and been accepted. The writer outlining some of his response to the question is one I consider to be an absolute power-thinker. He possesses a stellar intellect and a curiosity the magnitude of which cannot be adjectivized (by the time you are reading this that may actually be a word. Here and now, I just made it up.) He is burst open to questions and seeks answers, on a massive scale. And he is an extremely driven person, and the drive is: question. go past the common boundaries.
As one of the three things he discussed, he stated, (and I paraphrase), that though the young may believe that life is not valuable without preferred features such as geographic location, life partner, or career, he would like his children to know that they will in fact adapt to situations poorer than they had hoped for, and without most of what the now-young person treasures.
I respect him so...ah the pain! This perspective is very upsetting. I often find him not just right, but profoundly and deeply right--, and in this case, I either disagree, or I want to disagree. I haven't decided which, yet. Any response to this question is completely subjective, and there is no one right answer--but still, it was crushing to me: the surprising amount of acceptance of, and resignation to the sometimes less than satisfactory outcomes of important individual decisions--the ones that each of us make in our lifetimes. And that he would advocate the transmission of an understanding that, even when it is obvious that a decision is no longer the best choice, a person can and will adapt to the situation, and be OK, and one need not seek change, because good enough is good enough... . ugh. I may be wrong but I read this as his wanting his children to learn to accept the choices that they at one point made, for all of their time, and learn to live with OK and be OK with it.
I hope I misunderstood.
Because I think this is fine for some people to say, but not him. He and his questions simply breathe potential, and so why does he admit stuntedness into his perspective, as natural, or acceptable, or fine. Of course we can adapt. But should we, really? Is it a more noble or cleaner course of a life lived? Is it better somehow, easier or smoother, and then if he thinks yes to any of these, how does that work--perhaps less external turmoil, but what happens to a person inside? Accepting OK rather than striving for better than that...and why, again? I suppose his answer is that what happens to a person inside is that they adapt. I do not like this answer.
(This is almost un-American!, I say, half in jest. But, it is rather German, in my experience. We'll save that--another day, another missive from me.)
Because he is writing, in his article, about ideas that he considers both wise and of such import that he wishes it were possible that his children actually learn them, I have to conclude that this belief is a product of his reasoning, and not just a flash of momentary defeat. In fact, he does not see it as defeat. He sees it as a fact. Just: that. And again: oh no! (Of three points he made, I should say, only one was upsetting--and another one contradicted it, which causes in me a slim glimmer of relaxed muscles: that his argument was rather more sophistry than not). In thinking about it, Future Beings, Future Me, the post was pretty much a poem. It was beautiful, painful, and answered fewer questions than it raised--at least in me.
But... what does it mean for us? In the end, did we adapt?...and why did we adapt, when there were options, and adaptation was not really a matter of environmental pressure?... In that market, in our long lives, did we stop taking each choice and deciding along the way if it was working or not, and then acting on the considered answer? Did we eventually accept status quo? How do you all live; what is going on?! Do you even experience dissatisfaction, and if so, is it considered OK?!?
These are questions with no answer right now. Was he on the right track, as was so often the case? Oh. This is what I wish I knew about our future.
But he asked that question later, in a different article altogether.
September 6, 2012
nonautobiography part 3
At the very moment that I was born, four minutes past Sagittarius, they
discovered I had no penis. They had always wanted a girl, but didn't
think it would happen, and then there I was: the first girl in the
family in 50 years, the youngest of five brothers before me. The whole
of my extended family came by my father, who had eleven brothers. And
no sisters. Though no one knew it then, I was also to be the last
person at all to be born into the clan. To the displeasure of my
father, my mother, exhausted and sweaty and with blood on her socks,
(but lucid and able to boast of not using pain medication for my birth),
ever planning ahead, snarled from the stirrups that if she got pregnant
again it would kill her, and for her doctor to go out there to the
waiting room and tell her husband that fact right now. He frowned while
he stitched her up, but finally consented: and that was the moment she
became what she considered to be liberated. For the rest of her life,
when she would have more than two glasses of wine, she would tell the
story of how she would, and still did, thank God for the pill. She was a
very devout woman, who liked to say that she never wanted children in
the first place, and could have lived happily without any, but there was
nothing to do for it. She also was very permissive with my brothers,
saying, as they were heading out on some adventure, that the loss of one
wouldn't matter, there were plenty more at home. My mother was
delighted to have a girl, but let's be realistic. She was one of the 13
adults in a close knit family living near one another in the suburbs,
who would in many senses jointly parent my siblings and I, and she was
often universally overruled with her opinions. From the beginning, in
their understandingly limited comprehension of female, the family in
general held on to one great fear: that I would become impregnated by
age 16. This fear was struck through with a thick vein of anticipatory
schadenfreude, and his brothers began teasing my father. And so when I
was four days old they placed a bet, eleven against one I would get
knocked up, to be called on my sixteenth birthday. I didn't know this
until much later.
When it was haircut time, we all marched down to Mr. Sid's barber shop, with his travel posters of Greece and his suspect magazine selection, and we were given identical styling, which happened to be one or the other of the two styles Mr. Sid knew. We were buzz cut in summer, and given a slightly longer side part in the school year. Mr.Sid would always ask me if I wanted a shave too, noting the darkish hair that downed my upper lip. "A moment with the blade and you can have it made", and I would scarlet as his belly roiled with convulsive laughter. My mother sat there and didn't remark the incident, until we left, and she would hiss as we walked down the sidewalk that I had to have thicker skin; I had to stop letting other people hurt me, and that in the end, I should buck up because it was not going to change until I was a teenager and could take care of my own hair. My mother prized simplicity, and that was the bottom line. It didn't matter that people mistook me for a boy. It didn't matter that I hated Mr. Sid. Hate was just a feeling. I realize now that I hated Mr. Sid instead of hating my mother.
So, for thirteen years, during the school year, every six weeks I would ride home on the floor of the car, crying, wetting my root beer flavored sucker with drool, tears, and snot. I derived pleasure in pressing that lollipop into the carpet of the car, then smashing it and grinding it in. When it hardened again, and my mother found it, she would be furious. Every six weeks. I'm not sure why my wailing didn't move her, but I am sure it had absolutely no effect upon her need to streamline, and run a tight ship. This desire for order shows in the photos of my childhood: six kids in lederhosen shorts, bump bump bump down the line from tallest to shortest, or six little ones in footed pjs holding their favorite present and sitting around the Christmas tree. I remember my favorite gift was the dump truck I received the year I was eight. It came unpainted and with a set of paints so I could decorate it as I wanted. I covered it in pictures of flowers, and girls wearing dresses, and holding hands.
It is a dubious fortune, at best, to be a first and a last.
When it was haircut time, we all marched down to Mr. Sid's barber shop, with his travel posters of Greece and his suspect magazine selection, and we were given identical styling, which happened to be one or the other of the two styles Mr. Sid knew. We were buzz cut in summer, and given a slightly longer side part in the school year. Mr.Sid would always ask me if I wanted a shave too, noting the darkish hair that downed my upper lip. "A moment with the blade and you can have it made", and I would scarlet as his belly roiled with convulsive laughter. My mother sat there and didn't remark the incident, until we left, and she would hiss as we walked down the sidewalk that I had to have thicker skin; I had to stop letting other people hurt me, and that in the end, I should buck up because it was not going to change until I was a teenager and could take care of my own hair. My mother prized simplicity, and that was the bottom line. It didn't matter that people mistook me for a boy. It didn't matter that I hated Mr. Sid. Hate was just a feeling. I realize now that I hated Mr. Sid instead of hating my mother.
So, for thirteen years, during the school year, every six weeks I would ride home on the floor of the car, crying, wetting my root beer flavored sucker with drool, tears, and snot. I derived pleasure in pressing that lollipop into the carpet of the car, then smashing it and grinding it in. When it hardened again, and my mother found it, she would be furious. Every six weeks. I'm not sure why my wailing didn't move her, but I am sure it had absolutely no effect upon her need to streamline, and run a tight ship. This desire for order shows in the photos of my childhood: six kids in lederhosen shorts, bump bump bump down the line from tallest to shortest, or six little ones in footed pjs holding their favorite present and sitting around the Christmas tree. I remember my favorite gift was the dump truck I received the year I was eight. It came unpainted and with a set of paints so I could decorate it as I wanted. I covered it in pictures of flowers, and girls wearing dresses, and holding hands.
It is a dubious fortune, at best, to be a first and a last.
September 5, 2012
nonautobiography (2)
understand hell.
we've all heard about that hot inferno red poker spiked middle earth torture chamber, so let's offer that description as one possible image of hell, but add as variants, for this thought experiment, the following:
a) hell is the current world, but with no coffee and no music or cinema and definitely no wine, a place where one is constantly running late, and and wearing too-tight shoes, without end
b) hell is the current world, except that every time anyone's mouth moves all that comes out of it is of diaper rash, politics, the cost of gasoline, the random activities of second-cousins, odd weather patterns, previous ski vacations, cable company "issues", and high school pranks, without end
c) hell is the current world, but a world with only bad writing and one is being constantly bored, or the opposite, ---to be condemned to only reading a stream of beautiful writing that makes one wish to kerosene one's own keyboard and throw away the pen
d) hell is here and now, and is such that one can confidently state that on average, its normal is "good enough".
***
choose one hell. got it?
now picture deciding to walk away. picture deciding, and executing.
how'd that work out for you?
yeah. the utter panic and vision of walking away is easier to imagine with some definitions than with others: for example, departure from the middle earth would definitely be difficult, even with a shovel or an accommodating and discrete elevator man, i'll give on that. look at what happened to orpheus and eurydice. we can't even rely upon our surface earth peeps--our most devoted of still-living lovers willing to gamble their very souls for us, to be secure in us---try finding one reliable stranger guy in hell to help out. i imagine that the hedonistic, greedy for instant gratification,
and i think everyone could agree that options a, b, and c are all nightmares that would be difficult to leave because implied in the statement itself is that the entire world is like that, so where would you go? those were trick options. and you thought d was the trick option, didn't you? because of those words, "good enough".
perhaps because of the five options given, in which only one can, in reality, loom as a threat--(i have no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that lead me to believe any of the first four variables could even be)--my mind dismisses the other four rather efficiently. but that aside, i do find that the good enough life, the one many don't even consider at all when asked to imagine unpleasantness in extreme, is the slipperiest, stickiest, most trappifying Hell of them all. remember that there is no way out at all of the first four hells. but this good enough thing...this trumps them all, for me.
and this is the wine-dark, the mystery dust or poem inside of us, the thing we don't or can't articulate to anyone. this tiny "ok" hairball is swallowed, accidentally hidden by us, and most dangerously, it is secreted away from ourselves.
so there is nothing to tell, really. no words for no thing to say--it's all fine.
but at some point, our consent or no, words and definitions come together to describe. and it all comes down to which story one wants to tell, really.
pity us.
September 4, 2012
dad
it is so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk
fry an egg on a sidewalk and remember
sitting at the table being fed the daily feast
of flared nostrils and obey and
that his, his was the way.
but later, listening to his music, his plunging
the rod through the barrel
with clean cotton pieces
schwut scweescht schwut tk tk tk pause. tk
remember
the cologne of gun oil and crisp
fresh cold broken twigs fresh clean ruin
clinging to stubble and red wool. tender skin and
(he really did have the softest, silkiest)
tender skin and stories. this was
the scent this was the sound of him.
his hands scarred and strong. foreign.
they moved in old ways and the
things he knew. he spoke exotic.
forests blinds iron sights. bullets and buckshot
and why.
decoys and calls and antlers with points
and once. and once when he was young
there was that hole shot through the floor
at his feet. to the dining room table below.
now he wasn't table he.
pulling the luster of early morning
to himself focused on now and then.
this morning he spent in his
now and then.
a silver afternoon by the fire
breathing crackle and spark and watching him.
expanded uncompromised young and
in those moments the him of him. seeing
the now and then.
on some dry scorching day
fry an egg on a sidewalk and remember
words and meaning are not the same.
nonautobiography (1)
There are things you never tell anyone. It's not that they are dark
wine secret, but that they are central, and difficult to see. And more difficult to articulate. Listen: put your head on the cool side
of the pillow and Hear: the stories in the blues, the ache, the boozy
smoke--you hear the same themes over and over again, and these are the
themes of this story, too. These are the themes of Bukowski, Nabokov, Kundera, and grit. This is a story about the dust-to-mud side
of the street. You know of it even if you haven't walked it, because by
now you've certainly heard the music--swelling rainstorms of love,
scorn, and lonely nights when you feel as significant as a figment of
imagination. This is that.
This is a story of growing up.
Some people imagine growing up to be something that occurs between the ages of 0 and 18, say...though we are keeping our kids 'Kids" longer and longer now. At any rate, growing up is supposed to be a phenomenon that happens to us and ends sometime shortly after puberty, when we stop growing physically. And that is growing up; true. But I didn't grow up, then. I grew up when I realized that I'd literally sold myself into slavery, and at such a low price, for just the promise of white respectability. Well, even that didn't cause me to grow up--that happened when I realized I had a choice right now: stay in hell, or start walking. I chose walking. I'm still walking. It's a long, hot, fucking armpit of a miserable walk out of this joint, let me tell you. My name is Irrelevant. I am you--the good choice girl, or the bad choice girl. The one a mama invited to dinner, or snapped at on the telephone.
Who decides who is good choice and who is bad? Ah. Thars the rub, as they say. "They" are pirates. An honest lot, pirates. With a pirate, you know where you stand.
This is a story of growing up.
Some people imagine growing up to be something that occurs between the ages of 0 and 18, say...though we are keeping our kids 'Kids" longer and longer now. At any rate, growing up is supposed to be a phenomenon that happens to us and ends sometime shortly after puberty, when we stop growing physically. And that is growing up; true. But I didn't grow up, then. I grew up when I realized that I'd literally sold myself into slavery, and at such a low price, for just the promise of white respectability. Well, even that didn't cause me to grow up--that happened when I realized I had a choice right now: stay in hell, or start walking. I chose walking. I'm still walking. It's a long, hot, fucking armpit of a miserable walk out of this joint, let me tell you. My name is Irrelevant. I am you--the good choice girl, or the bad choice girl. The one a mama invited to dinner, or snapped at on the telephone.
Who decides who is good choice and who is bad? Ah. Thars the rub, as they say. "They" are pirates. An honest lot, pirates. With a pirate, you know where you stand.
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