Sunday, July 5, 2015
For Those Not In Love
It’s
almost impossible for me not to see
those who
disagree with me as ignorant
if not
stupid. And unreasonable. At times,
as malicious.
Occasionally: as evil.
I know
better, of course: but this is how
I feel. “Get in touch with your feelings,”
my shrink
told me years ago, a fashionable
diagnosis
especially among the masculine.
inclined.
I’m just describing.
I could
deny—pretend I’m Christian or
Buddhist,
fake it till I make it, compart-
mentalize,
suppress; but the hate remains,
the same and
antagonism. It’s annoying:
other
people’s points of view, beliefs, biases,
convictions,
prejudice. I’d be lying if I said
other
wise. It’s an eminence front.
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Did you know that engaging in singing will optimize cortisol levels for about 16 to 20 min. Works for me.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteOptimizing Cortisol Levels
Summers I spend sitting under the Bo Tree.
Others play golf, hike the Pacific Northwest
Trail, take a month at the lake in New
Hampshire or Cream Hill Pond jn Connecticut
sweeping out cobwebs & mice droppings.
Getting in groceries.
Ocean Grove. Checking out new breweries in
Asheville. Off to Disneyland with kit & caboodle.
Following the progress of Bernie Sanders and
the trees across from Jensen—squirrels and
crows and sometimes buzzards circle the
piggery and its afterbirth..
I think I am not the boss of me. Along for
the ride. In the kiddy car seat driving my
automobile. Beep Beep (red rubber horn)
Beep Beep
Writing works for you and arguing.
ReplyDeleteconverse action
ReplyDeleteA little shot of napalm and adrenalin here and there, optimizing, calibrating.
ReplyDeleteDIALECTIC: where winning an argument is
ReplyDeleteas anti-climactic and useless as losing it, as
opposed to keeping-IT-in-play—anticipating
the possibility if not promise of emerging
phenomena & OMG revelation for crying out
loud.
That's why some songs are happy, some sad, some stormy, some mesmerizing, some calming, some whipping up. They say it is "a way of knowing". What do you think from the epistemological point of view?
ReplyDeleteMusic as knowing, even without words.
ReplyDeleteIs it our most universal language, as the cliche goes?
ReplyDeleteShow & Tell. Music is affect-knowing. If I could say it I wouldn't have to dance it--my sister-in-law likes to say. If I could dance it, I wouldn't have to say it--I tell her. Incommensurate and complementary. Singing a song won't fix my Jeep.
ReplyDelete.
Or is that against dualism?
ReplyDeleteAnd the mechanic keeps the radio going, calibrating himself.
ReplyDeleteI'm not against dualism. Turn it up, I say. It's the collapse of dualities I'm againist
ReplyDeleteThat's what I mean. Dualism is the ideology, so to speak, and unifying the spiritual with the physical, as in music, is contra to it.
ReplyDeleteDualism is conceptual. In real-time" ratios of relationship (also conceptual but applied)
ReplyDelete?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThe binary dualities we use to organize perception and use are mind-constructions: not inherent. Conceptual. In realtime our dualities enable us to ratio (rationalize) and measure the relationships. Random to order, for example. Noise to News. Wrong to Right. Cold to Hot. Ratios. Rationals. Rationality. Reason
Does not seem to fit here, somehow. You have lost me either affective lay or cognitively, or both, or my late breakfast was too heavy. Not sure. Most basically, maybe, we mean different things by dualism. I am thinking of the system that thinks of material things as inferior or evil. Including music and musical instruments.
ReplyDeleteThe Germans have a saying: where people sing, settle down there; bad people don't have songs.
Which is a little much, perhaps, but something to consider.
Dualism: hot/cold, right/wrong, light/heavy, good/evil. Call them binary relationships: the parameters for our ratios and rationalism. Yes: there is also the tradition of spiritual/physical, pattern/matter, idea/material. It would be a religious tradition that also designates the dual good and evil on this distinction.
ReplyDeleteSpirit has to be represented by matter--reify, personify, deify. And that is the basis for idolatry and literalism and the fundamental agon--forgetting the "difference" between spirit and what represents it. Golden Calves galore.
ReplyDeleteThat has never worked for me. Your special thing though.
ReplyDeleteLet's say the gender business these days. Jenner thinks he has a female brain though male in body.
ReplyDeleteJust describing is all. What works for anyone is how we represent our sense of what's real. Aware of "representation" or not.i
ReplyDeleteIf we may go with biblical concepts, the angels do not marry and such. Physical creation, however, is created specifically male and female, some problems here and there which only confirm the rule. This declared good and in relationship to the Creator, who is wholly other. Still in his image, somehow.
ReplyDeleteI've had several transgender students--before and after--plus of course gays galore as colleagues. I suspect we are shifting to a different subject than dualism and representation. Culture and convention: the collective sense of gender etc.
ReplyDeleteAngels do not marry and countless can sit on the head of a pin and if god didn't want gays (so to speak) and their antics he would confound all the straight couples who manufactured them. When you start invoking creator and good you open up the various ways we represent our understanding of God as well as state.. Good and Evil--the fundamental if not ultimate "dualism."
ReplyDeleteAm I spiritually female? Is God "father" and not "mother"? Paul says that in Christ is neither male nor female...
ReplyDeleteI'll go with Paul's version here.
ReplyDeleteI haven't said much about evil. I was trying to affirm the physical.
ReplyDeleteBecause the physical is affirmed, however, it is also not irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteThe physical and psychological difference between male and female and gay and lesbian and transgender, Merely description going on here, yes? Affirming the differences.
ReplyDeleteRelevance is a value term as opposed to irrelevant. Difference that makes a difference (relevant) vs
ReplyDeletedifferences that make no difference (irrelevance)
And as a female, I feel offended by having to look at Jenner present himself as female in away I would never characterize femaleness. The magazine is still at Walmart. Every child and every immigrant had to look at it.
ReplyDeleteYou're not the only one--offended. She is getting a medal for bravery this week, which I imagine offends you like anything. And many.
ReplyDeleteAre they going to put that on newspaper covers for another month or two?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/what-makes-a-woman.html?_r=0
ReplyDeleteWhile I do believe that there are male and female brains ( lots of flex there, though). I have to agree with most of the article.
To finish we find out that Jenners most cherished idea about being a woman is that he, or she, no he, really, will be able to wear nail polish. This is about as insulting to women as it gets, and it completely betrays a "male" mind. The author of the article nails it by placing that tidbit last.
My dominant emotion is one of embarrassment: that all this stuff has to hang at the check-out, precisely where we meet the new Canadians, on their first job in the country, etc., where this provides the introduction to local culture. But then, maybe, sensationalism is promoted at the till, in their country of origin, too.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jenner proclaims himself as asexual. This is his definition of womanhood? It seems he wants to be a little girl. This story is wrong on so many levels. And the youngest children are now encouraged to question their gender on silly criteria like color presences and so on. It is complete insanity. Did not men dress in the wildest fashions through history, with silk stockings, turbans, jewel, and you name it? What does that sort of thing even have to do with anything? It is just a cultural dictate and ostentation. The magistrate gets the gold chain around his neck. And with it the burden of the office. Jenner bears none of the burdens of being a woman. He does bear a burden, but I am not sure of what. What womanhood is, he does not know.
He wants to be himself completely and he wants to be ok, he says. It sounds like his rugged individualism is his burden. How will this turn out? It is a different kind of adventure for him, like the car racing and other pursuits. He is playing with us all. It reminds me of the actors on Huck Finn's float, the king and the lord.
At 67, if he's just "playing with us all" it's costly and probably painful. I have 3 former students who are trans. None consider themselves "players"
ReplyDeleteMartin and I had a long term patient in the dental practice. He was not playing either. Like Jenner, he left a complete family behind, his children and all. Tragic, was the feeling you got. We treated the person (I still can't say she) well and he always came back. But I can't see how it made him happy.
ReplyDeleteJenner evidently is not leaving his family behind. Happier.
ReplyDeleteI read Brodsky on Robert Frost. He goes through Home Burial in great detail.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between the father and the mother--with regard to digging the grave for the son.
ReplyDeleteConverse action.
ReplyDelete"Without Contraries is No Progress."
ReplyDelete"Life" itself, said Mrs. Frost.
ReplyDeleteGot to go and help Martin on the acreage. The place is not yet sold.
ReplyDeleteWhen our son died, we read the Treasury of Daily Prayer. It gave us words when we had none. It cemented us while we could have come unglued. We had peace in the eye of the storm.
ReplyDeleteWe had nothing of the Frost's drama. But I envy somewhat his pursuit of her, however clumsy.
Probably many women would like to have a man with whom more intimate and sensitive things could be shared! explored. What do you really think, feel... But really, it becomes so much about your own grief and yourself, that it does not help, either. Maybe that's how so many writers get so depressed and suicidal. I think it would happen to me, if I gave way to it all.
We are counselled not to grieve like the heathen. That could mean a few different things. I guess to me it means to grieve prayerfully.
The genial poet and New England oracle was in fact a harsh husband and father.
ReplyDeleteBrodsky does not allow biography. He hates it. Like it ruins the poetry. Maybe everything has to be achetypes. Whether you study it for three years or one hundred, it is the same.
ReplyDeleteAnd in real life, you don't want to be known as a harsh man. It matters completely.
ReplyDeleteIt was called the New Criticism-the shift from biography and history and context to just responding to the poem on the page. (New in the 1950')
ReplyDeleteThe biographer Thompson comes under harsh criticism for being a wooden dolt. One gets weary of the secondary literature.
ReplyDeleteWary of and weary from.
ReplyDeleteDon't read it--if it wearies ..
ReplyDeleteYou, yourself, don't usually lapse into biography. I wonder how it happened.
ReplyDeletePeople are more important than ideas, my good old man would tell me, and he's right but I prefer ideas. Ann, on the other hand: people.
ReplyDeleteI wondered how it happened that you lapsed into biography with Frost.
ReplyDeleteI happened to hear he was a mean somabitch around the family--in contrast to his poetic genial persona. Lapse into biography?
ReplyDeleteYa. why.
ReplyDeleteDon't see it as a lapse into biography. Merely anecdotal. What's your concern and point?
ReplyDeleteIt's not anecdotal. You know nothing about it. It even is a matter of debate. And it's not you. So.
ReplyDeleteUnless you knew Frost yourself.
ReplyDelete??? This began with a distinction between the husband and the wife re the burial of the son: her seeming hysteria; his seeming flat affect. For some reason it's devolved into biography and lapses and matter of debates and that I'm not Frost and didn't know him myself. Can't figure your agenda or concern. It swings from this to that. Even accusatory (satanic). Anecdotal? I know nothing about it? Whatever.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.post-gazette.com/ae/books/2014/03/05/Was-Robert-Frost-a-monster-New-letters-compilation-offers-insights/stories/201403050016
ReplyDeleteI have to get my lazy self in gear. Putting on a BarBQ, including for the mother-in-law.
I still don't get your point and seeming agitation.
ReplyDeleteWe are talking about a man's reputation, a man who actually had wife and children, and a variety of untoward circumstances. He was not living the life of: I have got to find myself, no matter where the chips fall.
ReplyDeleteI am no expert on the man nor his times, but a man's reputation is something of value... This is why the kind of witness we bear makes it into the ten commandments.
My mother-in-law talked and acted as if I was starving my children because they were not fat rolly-pollies at each stage. On one level, it was her deprived childhood talking, on another it was disrespect for me. She has caused me untold grief and I was an orphan all my adult years. (Just and example.) In any case, everyone needs to take care of their words.
Only Satan, not. Satan can disparage all he wants. But we are not he. You not either. Anyways, you will think I am getting carried away. You will like to bring up things like me "having Swedenborg as a philanderer". All I have done is quoted his own words and lists on the matter. Primary source.
a satan is an accuser, an adversary. Possibly married with children and a reputation in the courts as effective. Reputations accrue--deserved or not. Frost is one of Americas most beloved poets. You must have trouible sleeping at night. Do you have a reputation?
DeleteSatan is a liar and a slanderer, a thief and adulterer, causing rifts in the closest relationships. There is nothing good about him.
ReplyDeleteThe satan was a prosecutor in the Hebrew court, like the joker and jester in the medieval court--whose function was to test (tempt) petitioners. Essentially an accuser and adversary. Most of us share this characteristic--of accusing others, or being adversarial. SatanicRUs. Just describing. But our argument is over reputation, yes? Anecdote. Biography. The difference between masc and fem. A writer and a poem etc.
ReplyDeleteReified.
ReplyDeleteI know that represents the Satan you and Carl and many believe in--but the accuser and adversarial spirit we all contain that makes us satanic strikes me as doing justice to our human nature--and is represented in Home Burial.
ReplyDelete.
I believe it is the satanists putting that one up.
ReplyDeleteWe're all satanic--it's the denial and cover up that's toxic.
ReplyDeleteWhen my husband was chair of the board for the college, finally renamed university, we attended the conferences for university board chairs. Of course, we were the smallest fry there.
ReplyDeleteOnce we sat at a dinner, and a woman had snakes tattooed all over her wrists. Someone drew attention to it and she explained why she had them. I forget the main idea, but she also threw in "and because Christians hate snakes." You will understand that it lodged itself in my mind.
What on earth would a snake, a picture of a snake, a tattoo of a snake have to do with my concern with evil and satan. If you will listen to what I have said then you will know my concern: satan is a liar and slanderer, a thief, murderer and adulterer. And he is smart. And if you don't belong to him, you are in his crosshairs. Watch out. Seeking to devour.
Lewis does such a cute job. In the end they have to devour each other.
ReplyDeleteLuther counsels to stay away from him. He is smarter than you. He says.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand he wrote songs that go: in battle we engage. One little word can fell him.
ReplyDeleteWe see that it not a long drawn out dialogue. Dialogue itself is not evil and not satanic, though it may be, or usually, is adversarial. A good dialectic is not satanic. Who ever came up with that is wrong.
ReplyDeleteYou don't listen. Accusation and adversarialness (not dialogue or dialectic) characterize the satanic. Prosecution. Testing (tempting). Don't confuse the characterization with the reified, personified, deified golden calf Character many Christians take literally and blame for their various agonies.
ReplyDeleteChrist accused. The law accuses. God will drag us into judgement. Our heart accuses. Our mother-in-law accuses. Because something accuses it is "satanic". Whatever Sam.
ReplyDeleteExactly: satanic. The accuser. The adversary. Though some deny and cover and oretend to walk on water and that's where it gets toxic.
ReplyDeleteTautology or some such nonsense.
ReplyDeleteI am that I am is tautology, That we accuse is a characteristic. Satanic. Adversarial. This just description--not accusatory. Grass is green. Sky: blue.
DeleteGod is satanic because he is good and we are not and therefore he accuses, and accusing is satanic--is tautological.
ReplyDeleteWhen the prophet comes and tears a strip off people he is not satanic. It is crap.
ReplyDeleteCrap? Tears a strip off? Feels like hello if not hell. Damnit, one might exclaim--that smarts, Bastard!
DeleteTautology is a definition in terms of itself or terms that substitute for itself. a white horse is a white horse. I am that I am. Sleep is a dormitive effect. Does God stand on his tippy toes while he accuses? Sit on his throne and gesticulate?. Wipe his weary brow? Hurl thunder bolts? (So to speak, in manners of speaking)
ReplyDeleteThere is more than one kind of tautology. See rhethorical vs. logical. And when Jesus heard that he was driving out the devil by Beelzebub, he said something quite unforgettable.
ReplyDeleteIs your third sentence supposed to be an example of tautology..What did Jesus say that was quite unforgettable? Is Beelzebub a tautological projection of Jesus? Legion?
ReplyDeleteOpposing everything on principle seems to be, to this humble thinker, possibly something like a logical tautology--meaningless. Opposing everything, including the good, seems to be spiritually dangerous. Casting Jesus in the mold of Satan or satanic, is something he discussed himself, in the strongest terms. We are called to have discernment, using our own head, tradition and, indeed, the moral sense.
ReplyDelete22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” 23 And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27 But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
28 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”
As a writing exercise it seems to work, as this particular fool has fallen for it.
ReplyDeleteLutheran: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1116&v=jj2bm5-PMAI
ReplyDeleteI am working summer relief... Off to work, no computer.
ReplyDelete