Subtle Winks from the Eye of the World

I did not expect to enjoy my third or fourth re-read of Robert Jordan's Eye of the World recently, but I did.  Now that the series is officially finished, I think I'm going to plow though the entire series again, that is, if I can clear my to-read shelf first, a project I've been stalled on for 2 years now.  My enjoyment of the series dwindled the more the plot started dawdling in in a transparent attempt to stretch out the story for as many books as possible.  But it was nice to be reminded in Eye of the World how tight the story used to be.

There were a few things that jumped out at me on this last read-through though.  The first is how simple the plot of the first book is.  A bunch of farm boys meet a wizard and run from the farm to the city in a mostly straight line with the devil hot on their heels.  With a teleport to the final boss fight at the end.  It's a pretty solid chase story, all things considered.  Yes, "the bloat" can be seen in its nascent stages even in the first book, when the author takes 200 pages to describe two farm boys riding on wagons, being chased out of towns, and meeting unsavory people over and over again before finally reaching the big city.  It's so repetitive, that in the paperback edition I have there is an editing error where the author accidentally describes meeting the same damn farmer twice, and describes the encounters identically almost verbatim.  There's little growth or purpose to that part of the narrative and could probably have been covered in a few pages without the story losing anything.  But hey, it turned a 500 page novel into a 700 page novel.  Still, it grabbed me in the beginning and kept me turning pages until the climactic encounter at the Eye of the World, just like it did the first time.

Of course, some of the original head scratchers remain.  While I find his depiction of the gender war in small town villages interesting and amusing, then women all seem to be the same cardboard cut-out characters.  All arms akimbo, or folded beneath their breasts, or tugging on their braids and lecturing the men for being so dumb.  In the Wheel of Time, men and women are forever impenetrable mysteries to the other, locked in a never-ending cold war of parallel societies.  I'm not saying this is problematic necessarily, just that it always strikes me as odd, this depiction of women and their interactions with men.  It's as if the male-female split between Aes Sedai has fractured the gender relations in every other part of civilization as well.

Which brings me to the biggest idea that jumped out at me this read, which is how good a metaphor becoming an aes sedai is for a homosexual coming of age story.  In this universe, being a man who can channel fabulous power is not a choice, it is how one is born.  It is also terrifying and confusing to anyone who finds out, so men who realize this about themselves keep it secret for fear of being ostracized or killed.  Every man who can channel is assumed to be mentally ill.  Rand's in love with a woman, but he doesn't seem to feel much passion for her, and it's made clear pretty quickly that he and she are destined to be good friends at most.  He meets other male channelers who, while publicly reviled, disturb and excite him.   He spends most of the book in denial, plagued by frumpy matrons trying to smother him in one way or another before finding freedom in channeling pure(-ish) energy with other men.  He discovers he's not the same as other boys and is probably not going to be able to live the life his family and friends want for him, and eventually comes out in a public and dramatic way when he can't contain it any longer.  Okay, it's a little bit of a stretch, I'll grant.  Still, I think the case could be made.  And honestly, I like the story 100% better when I read it that way.  Read the quotes from the post below though, and tell me there's not at least a LITTLE homo-erotic subtext in a lot of those lines.

Or maybe it's just me.  Just me?  Okay.

Religious Liberty

Andrew Sullivan touches on a couple of things that I've been thinking about this week.  But I don't think he's quite definitive enough in his discussion so I'd like to reframe it a bit.  First, is this from Ross Douthat:

We are not really having an argument about same-sex marriage anymore, and on the evidence of Arizona, we’re not having a negotiation. Instead, all that’s left is the timing of the final victory — and for the defeated to find out what settlement the victors will impose.

I don't think Andrew pushes back hard enough here.  These kind of overwrought, garment-rending love songs to the victimization of christians have no reasonable basis in reality.  No one is telling churches what to believe or that they have to love gay people or the idea of gay marriage.  No one is pushing for punitive measures against churches for not loving gay people and they'd be wrong to do so.  Churches are still in complete control of what churches get to believe.  All that's happening is churches are losing the "right" to impose legislation on non-churchians regarding what marriage can legally be.  This is happening largely because they have, to date, failed to produce a single, valid argument about why two consenting adults who love each other should be unable to marry, or how those marriages will impact society in a negative way.  Not a single, compelling argument yet from them, other than, "but my limited and myopic interpretation of the bible in a way that conveniently reinforces my biases instead of challenging them suggests that ...".  Which is to say, not only do they not have a single, compelling civic argument against gay marriage*, there are compelling religious arguments against gay discrimination that most churches seem to be pointedly ignoring.  So no, I'm not going to feel sorry for churches on the basis of losing the battle on the civic right for gays to marry.  They are not going to be "forced" to do anything other than live in a world where gay people get to be married and affectionate with each other, sometimes in public, and where they and their children will have to see it.  And arguing that Christians have some kind of monopoly on the world marriage and the institution itself doesn't pass the laugh test.  Ask the kings of Israel what they think of "traditional" marriage.  When they can tear themselves away from their concubines and wives #2-100 I mean.  Ask the unmarried disciples how much traditional marriage allowed them to spread the word of god more effectively.  The modern religious case for "traditional marriage" as something the bible endorses is incoherent, and only emerges if you're good at picking metaphorical cherries.

And really, there are two arguments going on here aren't there?  The first is that "We are a christian nation and therefore the laws should be based, at least in part, on biblical values as perceived by citizens of this country in this century, especially James Dobson."  Since there are many good and strong arguments against this idea, they are failing that.  The second then, is, "Well, we at least deserve to create lives for ourselves where we don't have to interact with non-christians and open sinners like gay people," which, sadly, also has many strong, and obvious, arguments against it, from both a civic and religious point of view.  I don't know, honestly, why people who have lived in a pluralistic all of their lives don't understand that they have not ever had, do not have now, and will not in the future (hopefully!) the expectation to live in a society where they do not have to interact with people who do not believe in Jesus and do not share their sexual orientation.

The expectation that one can and even SHOULD expect or try to arrange this kind of life is flat out ridiculous.  Even from a churchian point of view, Jesus never promised a life of sameness, a life of comfort, and life where your beliefs and lifestyle can never be challenged.  In fact, if I'm remembering my churchian holy book correctly, he, in fact, exhorted his followers to get out in the world and rub shoulders with the unclean!  And, if in rubbing shoulders with the unclean fails to convert the unclean to your churchian point of view, he DID NOT recommend taking over the government and forcing them to live your way anyway.  And of course, this cuts both ways.  Gays like myself can't reasonably expect that we get to live in a world where everyone loves gay people and gay stuff in general!  The best deal for both sides then, given that neither can have a world where their worldviews and lifestyles will never be challenged or praised by all people, is to agree to, you know, courteously agree to disagree on these particular matters, because simply believing in a higher power doesn't hurt anybody else, and marrying someone of the same sex has so far been shown, scientifically no less, not to hurt people.

So no, I don't feel sorry for churchians on this particular matter.  We have, in fact, been having this discussion for a few short decades now, and the anti-gay marriage types have had ample time to make a compelling argument and have repeatedly failed to do so.  So no, this is absolutely NOT an imposition of liberal values on principled conservatives.  This is a relatively mild repudiation of the attempted imposition of christian principles on civic law because the religious argument against gay marriage is uncompelling*.  Liberals and the state do not care what churches choose to believe about gay marriage, so long as they aren't insisting the rest of us agree to their tortuous and tenuous arguments against it based on a biblical authority that non-churchians do not recognize or agree with.  And how many times do people have to suggest that churchians have lost the plot, before they'll consider the possibility that the reasons their beliefs are not compelling guidelines for behavior sans sympathetic legislation have more to do with flaws inherent in their own interpretation and adaptation of churchitarianism, rather than pernicious and stubborn choice to do evil by not listening to them and their questionable religious authority.  I would like to gently suggest that non-churchians are, by and large, reasonable people and the issue is they don't find your arguments against and decision to be hateful towards gay people reasonable or well-founded.  Even if we were to accept the possibility that the Bible contains some moral authority, that's still a long way from being convinced that churchians do not frequently, gratuitously, and seamlessly incorporate their personal and cultural biases into their sincerely held religious beliefs.

Beyond that, the whining about how people at large don't like them much for holding principled beliefs about the inherent ickiness of gay people is hard to sympathize with either.  People don't like you because you choose being an asshole to people who are different than you and not hurting anyone, because even they can see you have a choice in the matter, and that continuing to choose intolerance and venom towards people who AREN'T HURTING YOU BY LIVING THEIR LIVES WITHOUT SHAME says a lot about what kind of person you choose to be and how just and noble and worthwhile your beliefs are, regardless of the stories you tell yourselves about yourselves.  Even from out here, especially from people who used to be churchians like yourselves, we can see that unless you have love, all your culture war bluster might as well be a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.

Are beliefs that can not stand exposure to contradictory beliefs really that powerful or worth having?  Isn't it possible that anti-gay doctrine undermines and is incompatible with the broader doctrines of love, humility and grace?  Or would you rather just keep clanging that gong?

*  Gay people aren't harmed by loving each other and being physically affectionate.  Marriages between straight adults are not affected by the marriages of other people, gay or straight.  Children aren't harmed by knowing gay people exist.  Straight children aren't more likely to "grow up gay" because they've seen or met a gay person any more than gay children are likely to be "grow up straight" despite a lifetime of living and interacting with straight people.  Gay is an orientation, not a "gateway drug" to behaviors like pedophilia or bestiality.  In fact, the rates of pedophilia among the gay population is roughly the same as the rates in the straight population.  The state is not in the business of protecting people's immortal souls, so it doesn't matter if gay sex is, highly arguably from all angles, technically a religious sin from a civic point of view.  Conservatives are losing because they have yet to challenge any of the above statements with compelling logic or evidence.

Hindsight

When I read through old posts I feel like I have a multiple personality disorder.  Trying to express myself in fits and starts, a new way every time.  The ones that seem overly fanboy-ish and consumerist are the most embarrassing so far.  I want to slap myself and tell me to have some pride.

Unrelated, "Hindsight is 20/20" seems like an odd way to claim one's ass has perfect vision.  Be careful in gazing at the ass for the ass gazes also back.  I guess?  Maybe I'm missing something.

We Killed the Stars Long Ago

We killed the stars long ago
but left their corpses burning brightly.
We thought you'd like to see them so
we display them for you nightly.

We embalmed them all in gravity wells
put on some planets in adorning.
If you'd like to thank us, swell,
you may do so in the mourning.




cross-posted here.

Fragments from the Eye of the World

I wasn't it expecting it to be Robert Jordan's eye of the world that got me back into reading, but I'm glad it was. What a fun book. Not without its problems, of course, but I think I enjoyed it more this time than when I first read it in high school. I've finally taken to underlining my favorite passages, which is something I never understood in my technically competent but visionless youth, but I'm starting to see the point of. I may want to write a few more words about it in a couple days, but I thought it would be fun to highlight some of those fragments that jumped out at me this time. Perhaps they are more or less interesting out of context.

 *************

 There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

 "I have all stories, and I will tell all stories."

 That others knew and believed made all the difference.

 Around a farm the work never really got done; as soon as one thing was finished two more always needed doing.

  Light, who am I?

Lan scowled, but fell silent. "I am coming as quickly as I can, Rand, I promise you."

 "You talk when you should be listening."

 Surely it would not matter if he delayed just a short time in going to the tower?

  Your destiny, the voice whispered, insistent now, eager.

 "You listen sharp, think deep, and guard your tongue."

 "Did someone suggest burning my inn?" he asked softly.

 "You have forgotten who you were, forgotten what you were."

 "I am not a cheese for slicing."

 "This fellow . . . I believe he might sell his mother to Trollocs for stew meat if the price was right." 

"The Source is the river; the Aes Sedai, the waterwheel."

 "Before I let the Dark One have you, I will destroy you myself."

 "But there is no other choice, except to run and hide and run again for the rest of your lives."

 "I hope you remembered to forget ..." 

"Did they tell you the Eye of the World would serve you?"

 "You live like a beetle under a rock, and you think your slime is the universe."

 "She loves you, too, but she's not for you, or you for her."

 "Go then, but you won't escape."

 "Well, are your feet pegged to the ground?"

 "They don't care about finding the truth. They think they know that already."

 The entire city was broken.

 "There isn't any treasure here. There isn't anything but dust."

 ... a piercing whine just beyond hearing ...

 "I should have tried harder," he whispered.

 "She is strong, intelligent, and quite capable of finding her way to Whitebridge alone."

 "Burn me, I wish I could forget."

 "You can't say it in words. It's more of a feeling."

 "The Light will not help you, boy, and the Eye of the World will not serve you. You are my hound, and if you will not course at my command, I will strangle you with the corpse of the Great Serpent!" 

"A crystal lattice covering an island, and it hums when the moon is up."

 "The world will put a hook in your mouth."

 "the mighty axe does violence to the helpless tree, and is harmed by it."

 "I'll bet you get to run away a lot."

 "The Lost cannot be happy."

 He ran his eyes across the open area, over people moving about on their daily business, and when he brought them back a Myrddraal was halfway across the square.

 Sometimes Rand looked back, but the road behind was always empty.

 "I will find the song, or another will find the song, but the song will be sung, this year or in a year to come. As it once once, so shall it be again, world without end."

  Not complete. Accept. Full Heart. Full mind. You still struggle. Only complete when you accept.

 The wolves had no notion of time the way men did, no reason to divide a day into hours. The seasons were time enough for them, and the light and the dark. No need for more.

 "... but it's the stedding makes the Ogier, not the Ogier make the stedding."

 "In the end there was nothing left of him but the stories, and most of them wrong."

  To soar.

 "There is not truce with the Shadow. There is no mercy for Darkfriends."

 Outside, the sky muttered again.

 "Think of it. Life everlasting and power beyond dreams."

 "If my hounds must pull you down, they may not be gentle."

 For and instant the burned face held a look of sublime joy that turned to horror in the final moment, as if he had seen something waiting he did not expect.

 "Bloody ravens don't even wait for things to die."

 "You are mine," the raven said, and the sharp beak stabbed into his eye.

 "They say she can cut right through to what a man wants to hide."

 "Sometimes I think the reason you humans are the way you are is because your threads are so short."

"The Great Trees are all gone, and no one remembers them."

 "If a man tries to change the direction of his life and the Pattern has room for it, the Wheel just weaves on and takes it in."

 The Whitecloak was another human being, and the night had come alive to take them all.

 "In these times many things are dissolving, and breaking apart. Old barriers weaken, old walls crumble."

 "Or perhaps it is the end of Ages, the end of time itself. The end of the world."

 "Pain and division comes to the whole world, and this man stands at the heart of it."

 One minute Lan was in the doorway, the next he was at the bedside, as if he had not bothered with the intervening space. 

"You can't hold a man to blame for what he does when he's crazy, can you?"

 "This contest between us has taken place countless times before. Each time your face is different, and your name, but each time it is you."

 It was as if the dark became denser the more light there was, thickening as it fought against being diminished.

 Length on man-thick length sent ripples spreading rolling on and on until at last a tail rose, waving a point like a wasp's stinger for an instant in the twilight, at least five spans into the air. All along that length fat tentacles writhed like monstrous worms, as many as a centipede's legs.

 "I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him because he makes you smile."

 All women are Aes Sedai.

 "All things must grow where they are, according to the Pattern, and face the turning of the Wheel."

 "It was not what I was made for, but all was breaking apart, and they were alone, and I was all they had. It was not what I was made for, but I have kept the faith."

 "Some of us are bound no longer. The seals weaken..."

 "This is my place," the Green Man said, "and you shall hurt no living thing here." 

The cord was all. It hummed. It sang. It called Rand's soul.

  That should mean something. Thought was a new thing. I can think. I means me.

Abruptly she flung her arms around him, burying her face in his chest. "I'm sorry, Rand. I'm sorry. I don't care. Truly, I don't."

 "You needed something more than you had ever needed anything before in your life, and you reached out to the one thing that could give it to you."

 "Make them safe? Thom said men who have been gentled die because they stop wanting to live." 

"for the grave is no bar to my call."

 "It is not right that Treebrother should fall to the Blight."

 "I'm going away, but not home."

 "The Dragon is Reborn."

Reality Killed the Reality Star

I've been hesitant to really get involved with the outrage of the week.  Not because it isn't outrageous, but more because I have outrage fatigue.  I honestly don't know how much more energy I can work up over news that doesn't directly impact my community and that I cannot act upon in any meaningful way.  Our collective decision to visit our outrage perpetually on things safely out of our control is an assertion for another time.

So no, I'm not outraged, at least about his gay comments.  I've been out of the closet for a while now, and I am keenly aware that there are a bunch of people who have still chosen not to grapple with the fact that their communities are increasingly deciding to be kind to their gay friends, now that they realize they have lots of gay friends and not just lonely straight friends with "long-time roommates" and they're starting to feel a little self-conscious about their place in a shrinking subset of people willing to tell those faggots how it is.  What could these other people possibly understand about such perversion that they do not?  How could they read the Bible any differently than their gut tells them to?

Here's what he actually said:

 Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men," [Robertson] says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: "Don't be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers--they won't inherit the kingdom of God. Don't deceive yourself. It's not right.

...

It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.

Honestly, that doesn't come across to me as particularly hateful, just laughably ignorant and embarrassingly revealing for him.  It makes me feel sorry for him.  He's clearly not thought more than 2 seconds about how other people in the world might be different than him.  This is a grown man that understands, theoretically, that all men don't like duck hunting, and all men don't like broccoli  but all men not liking vaginas is a mind-boggling revelation forever out of his reach.  It makes me feel sorry for the women in his life that love to him is a fixation on genitalia and what you can do to them, rather than an irrational affection for another human being that inspires affectionate physical interaction.  Not to mention his bizarre assertion that anyone who has preferences different than his own is behaving illogically, because that's laughably indefensible from a logical point of view.  And, honestly, I never get tired of straight men wrinkling their nose at using the anus for sex because it is an organ for waste disposal, but still still ejaculate into their wives through their own filthy, urine-soaked urethras through an organ which is also, scientists have found, used for waste disposal.  If he's upset that our waste disposal and reproductive systems have been cross-wired in a manner he finds personally unappealing, he should probably take that up with God, or perhaps a good therapist.

Although, having said that, I suppose people find the hatefulness in the first of those quotes, where he says the Bible says it's not right.  But the worst thing he does is compare gays to the greedy,  drunks, slanderers and swindlers.  Which is an oddly unhumble and unchristian thing to say for a greedy swindler who used to look like this who's currently involved in a contract dispute worth millions of dollars about his super-authentic bearded, duck-hunting lifestyle super-real TV show that he sells you as the truth in front of God and man.  And yes, "won't inherit the kingdom of God" is basically code for "does not deserve to be treated politely in civil society", so I can see why people find it hateful.  I just personally have a hard time getting worked up about what one bigot from the south has to say about things he doesn't understand.  He has a right to profess his profound ignorance of biblical principles, basic decency, and lack of empathy and humility and all the respect those things entail.

So no, I don't find him incredibly hateful in his comments about gays.  He didn't say he wanted to kill them or anything.  He's just an increasingly marginalized dude who is ridiculously clueless about the diversity and richness of human relationships and how unimportant his particular preferences are in determining what is beautiful and fulfilling for another human being.  He basically said, "I can't understand how someone likes something I don't like."  And that's just sad.

Actually, I find it a little surprising that considering the banality of his quote on not understanding gay people, more people aren't upset at this quote:

I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field .... They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, 'I tell you what: These doggone white people'--not a word! ... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

And from this he assumes black people were happier before they got civil rights.  Ta-Nehisi Coates has a historical, thoughtful and frank response to this that is worth reading in full:

The black people who Phil Robertson knew were warred upon. If they valued their lives, and the lives of their families, the last thing they would have done was voiced a complaint about "white people" to a man like Robertson. Ignorance is no great sin and one can forgive the good-natured white person for not knowing how all that cannibal sausage was truly made. But having been presented with a set of facts, Robertson's response is to cite "welfare" and "entitlement" as the true culprits.

The belief that black people were at their best when they were being hunted down like dogs for the sin of insisting on citizenship is a persistent strain of thought in this country. This belief reflects the inability to cope with an America that is, at least rhetorically, committed to equality.  

So outraged?  No. Partly because I'm tired of saying "how much?' every time some internet link says "be outraged" (this goes double for "be inspired"). Partly because outrage doesn't really get us anywhere except maybe, MAYBE, he'll be on TV less.  And honestly, I think odds are good he'll both he and A&E will come out of this richer due to the resulting ratings spike from all this news coverage.  I'm tired of being played, and I suspect that his stupid comments aside, that this is more a manufactured drama.  At this point, knowing what we do about how much of reality TV is outright scripted or dishonestly edited, how can we not at least suspect that this might be just another scripted scene in the show, using us and our collective, impotent outrage as unwilling participants?

We're giving him far more coverage than his statements and personal importance deserve.  And the entire focus of the conversation is the non-existant persecution of Christians in the U.S., defined here as "people don't love me when state my unsupported beliefs as absolute truth", which completely overshadows the gob-smacking assertion that black americans at threat of lynching for speaking up in the pre-civil rights era were happier than they are today, which apparently isn't even a topic worthy of discussion.  If I'm outraged about anything, it's THAT.

Dancing on the Ceiling

It's one thing to deal with the fact that we were born into a man-made set of systems that are sometimes corrupt and frequently have goals that are at odds with our own individual values.  For instance, I think one could forgive someone for believing the benchmark for human progress does not lie in how frequently we make very wealthy men slightly more wealthy.  It's quite another thing to move beyond that into resenting being born into a universe with the particular set of laws that seems to govern ours such as gravity, electro-magnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, entropy and the death of all biological organisms.

"I'm not going to be part of your system of planets orbiting this star, man!  And your magnetism and your gravity wells and your complicated chemical interactions sustaining all biological life!  Your system sucks man!  That's just your opinion, you know!"

I only mention it, because there's this insane little man inside me that won't shut up about it.  I think the first step to sanity in this universe is recognizing I exist within a few inescapable constraints and that my id (or my inner toddler) isn't going to approve.

You know how some people grow up religious or in the closet, and then at some point have to question some of what they believed?  I think I'm in the middle of questioning everything, even gravity.

Current status:  Dancing on the Ceiling.

Upon further review

As always, it is humbling to read what I have written, then read a punchy essay by people better at writing cohesive, engaging pieces.  I understand that blogs that are short, punchy and to-the-point are more popular, but it's not really what I want to write just yet.  I'd rather try and actually either make an argument for something or hash something out which is going to take more than a few sentences.  Why are people in such a rush, anyway?  Maybe they're usually procrastinating on the internet (*coughs*) and feel guilty about lingering too long on any one site.  So 30 minutes spent on 5 sites feels acceptable, because they only linger on a site for a few minutes before "getting back to work" (clicking the next link down the rabbit hole), whereas 30 minutes spent reading one long essay/article is more problematic to the decisive reader because one has to consciously set aside a sizable block of time to NOT do the thing one is supposed to be doing.  But if it's just one little link . . .

Ahem, in any case, right now I want to avoid short, punchy bullshit devoid of any real substance, and instead write long, thoughtful, but readable essays on whatever bullshit currently takes my fancy.  So, charitably, I think I'm about one for two.  Yeah, that sounds about right.

The first stupid thing I can't stand about existence

There will come a day when this blog isn't solipsistic ridiculousness and borderline unreadable.  Today is not that day.

I don't like living on this planet right now in a lot of ways.  It's kind natural for someone going through a second adolescence/extended mid-life crisis, but I recognize it as silly.  I'm going through the "your system is bullshit man." phase all over again and it's kind of exhausting and embarrassing, which is why I haven't been writing about it much.  In true H fashion, I have mostly dealt with this in the usual way:  flopping on the ground like a fish out of water then lying there quietly, staring at the sky, playing dead.  Which is to say I haven't done much but dissociate with video games, struggle with motivation for doing my job and have again completely lost track of when the sun rises and sets.  Well, I take it back, I'm keenly aware of the sun because I don't wake up (in terms of focus and energy) until it goes down and the only real motivation to sleep is when it threatens to rise again.  Seriously, it's a giant ball of fire that hangs in the sky, I don't know why people aren't more alarmed.

What is new, is that this old fish-flopping vampire me is being watched by a somewhat newer, adultish me, wondering just how long this bullshit is going to go on.  Because that dude would rather not keep doing this until we both die unfulfilled.  There is clearly a part of me which would dearly like to procrastinate on living my life and taking the chances I want to take allllllll the way until my lamentable and unrequested death, which, I think we can all agree, is a terrible plan.  It feels so right to my inner fish, but it's a terrible plan.

So, here I lie, limp, moist, and scaly, wondering what exactly I'm going to do about it.  Laying here doing nothing, hating myself for doing nothing, but hating the world too much as it is to want to involve myself in it is honestly driving me crazy.  And it's increasingly apparent to me that I don't have forever to "figure things out." and maybe I should start working my way through it, whatever it is that I need to work through.  So I'm going to write my way through it as best I can.  Starting with the fact that I don't have forever, because that's bullshit.

I can't stand that I'm going to die and that I'm smart enough to understand that.  It's stupid.  I hate it.  I hate that I'm going to die.  I hate how much and how little I was taught about death and I hate how much I'm having to unlearn about it all now.

I want to say my parents never gave me advice/training on how to deal with mortality, but I think from their point of view they did.  They gave me Jesus, which was supposed to cover that base.  If I believe in Jesus, and fall in line with the myriad bullshit that entails in Adventism, I would get to live forever, and that was all I needed to worry about as far as mortality went.  My basic training was, "Having anxiety about death?  Soothe yourself with Jesus." which is what my parents and relatives still do, and it seems to work well enough for them as far as I can tell.

I suppose it worked for me for a while?  I don't really know if I ever bought into the religion, but I think I did buy in far enough to assume that I was probably going to live forever, somehow, even if some of the specifics of Adventism didn't really pan out.  To be fair to my younger, dumber self, this is a fairly comforting belief, and it relegated thoughts about mortality to an uncomfortable tickle at the back of my mind that rarely needed scratching.

Now, as a proud homosexualist agnostic, I've had to come to terms with it on my own.  I haven't really found the process enjoyable.  I keep having to catch myself, in moments of existential stress, thinking, "Well, I'm sure it will all get sorted out after the second coming . . . " and remind myself that this is a learned response, not a reasoned response.  I don't even suspect on an emotional level that the Adventist eschatology is true anymore, but it's hard to shake the brain-washing training of my childhood.

But I've been searching anyway, as an adult who can ostensibly make up his own mind about things, and honestly, even without a comfort blanket about eternal life, I've never felt more okay about the fact that I'm going to die as I am right now, even though, on principle I still think it's bullshit.  Having been injured and operated on in a variety of exciting and popular ways, injury is less frightening to me now, than when I had only read about it.  I expect that to be true of death as well, although I'm not sure how rational that expectation is.  I guess I'm slowly developing a sense of what I can control and what I can't, and the idea that at some point I will be unable to stop myself from dying and my only choice will be to suffer and agonize over it or accept it and let the experience happen is strangely calming.  It's still bullshit to be sentient and mortal simultaneously and I hate it, but that thought is calming nonetheless.

I've done a lot of reading on the subject in the last year or two, about what happens after death according to various philosophies/religions, and it's obvious that no one really knows, and anyone who claims to is trying to sell you something.  I find I reject the Christian narrative almost entirely, because all the legalism and sin and punishment and salvation and rewards in heaven nonsense, seems, at best, like convenient social engineering to keep people well-behaved and content to suffer.  In any case, it doesn't make sense to me.

I like the practice of buddhism, and the philosophy because it rings true, but I'm not remotely sold on the supernatural aspects of the buddha.

Islam is right out, although I'm sure it contains some good core principles much like Christianity.

As for the dogmatic materialists, I concede consciousness might be entirely brain-generated, and it's quite possible the perceptions that I have when I'm awake are all there is, and that when the brain dies, all that is me goes with it.  However, I don't have their confidence on the matter.  For a bunch of of self-described skeptics, they sure have some strong beliefs on an afterlife nobody really has any evidence for.  Don't even get me started on the singularity idiots who think immortality as cyborg/computer program is a natural and foreseeable evolution of technology.  That motherboard is not your mother.  It might be a good idea to wait on predictions of consciousness transfer until we have a basic understanding of what consciousness is and the specific mechanisms behind it.

As for the spiritualists, who knows.  Lots of people claim to have seen ghosts (like 38% in the US I heard this week? [citation needed]), lots of people claim to have had near death experiences where they find their consciousness has a non-physical aspect that detaches from the body and continues after their body dies, but no one has much in the way of proof on any of that.  I am sure many of them are making it up, or didn't see what they thought they saw, and I suspect some of them may be relating truthful experiences, but how truthful I don't know.  The "beings" they tend to talk to frequently mention there's only so much they can say, because we aren't meant to know if there's anything beyond, or what it might be.  So whether ghosts or NDE's have much to tell us about a possible afterlife I don't know, but I haven't seen a reason to rule them out entirely, nor have I seen a reason to start conducting seances in order to start a rich exchange of ideas with the spirit world.

What came out of my reading on ghosts and out-of-body experiences though, was an introduction to theosophy, which was an idea fashionable in the spiritist heyday of the late 1800s.  Which, unless I am mistaken, is the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, and we are all old souls, who have been reincarnating through a series of increasingly complicated organisms in some kind of cosmic search for "enlightenment" whatever that may be.  And once we've reincarnated as a human a few times on this planet and learned whatever it is we needed to learn here, we move on through a succession of ethereal realms until ... oneness?  Transcendence?  Some new bullshit?  I don't really believe this either, but I must admit, I kind of like the idea.  It appeals to my particular sensibilities.

In short, I haven't figured out what happens after I die, and I live in a society which is not particularly good at helping their fellow sentients cope with their own mortality, so the fat lot of good the rest of you have been to me on this one.  The materialists might be right, but "Be a man and walk into nothingness with your head held high." is not a particularly helpful advice on coping with the problem emtionally.  And I have a pretty low patience for people who claim to know all about what happens at the end of all things, but can offer me precisely nothing in terms of proof.  Just reassurances and tradition and hand-waving meant to soothe and co-opt me.

I think I feel into the trap of thinking that I was somehow removed from nature, either through technology or Jesus or some other specialness.  But the truth is, we follow the same pattern as every other thing that lives on this planet.  We're born, we're cute as a button as children, obnoxious, violent and sexy as we bloom and reproduce, and then we fade, clawing and screaming or with our hands in the air enjoying the ride, until the matter that makes us finally breaks down and returns to the earth.  I still hate the idea that I'm not special enough to live forever, but when I think of it that way, as a natural part of life that we are all designed for, it's not quite so bad.

As for potential afterlives, that is an unknown that will be known (or not!) once I'm dead, but do I HAVE to know for sure what lies beyond before I get there?  Probably not, although I'd like to.  It's just as well, I guess.  The universe seems to be playing that one pretty close to the vest.

So I don't know, and you don't know, and maybe we're not meant to know, and maybe we just can't know by definition.  But, as a life skill, we have to cope with the fact that none of us seems to get out of here alive, and I am working on that.  But I hate it.  I hate that I have to die, and I hate that you have to die, and I that everyone's so shitty about it one way or another and that nobody really likes to talk about it.  And I hate that while I know rationally that I'm not so special as to deserve eternal ongoingness, emotionally I'm the center of the goddamn universe, and the tension between those two sides of me is hard to navigate most days.  And the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's not dying I fear so much, as dying with the things I want to to still undone.  Dying, I can't do so much about.  But things still undone?  I have some power there.  Although I suspect it will require more of me than laying here quietly on this metaphorical existential river bank, impotently shaking my fin at the world.

I'm gonna die, and I'd better get off my ass soon if I want to get some things done.  Well shit.  That's not something a fish likes to hear.

New Po-em

Burned Bridges

Over at my other site.  Poem might be over-selling it.  Was just thinking about what I wanted for my life and what I made of it and that's what came out.

Breaking down the Equation

Your pet theory =(your perspective)/(ER) - Bullshit * emotional bias

where your perspective is small, ER is the scope of the empirical reality in question and where

your perspective = intuition * no. of relevant experiences + personal evidence * analytical rigor + ∑ (3rd party anecdotes * veracity)

and

Bullshit * emotional bias = ∑(anecdotes * blindspots^2) + (what you want to be true)/(what you know to be true) + ∑(logical fallacy * (1-critical thinking))

Where anecdotes are constants and critical thinking and veracity are normalized.

In order for the equation to be positive, we need to keep the first term as large as possible and the second term as small as possible.  To do this, minimize the scope of the theory, increase perspective, and minimize bullshit and unhelpful emotional bias.  Please note emotional bias can contribute positively to perspective if the number of relevant experiences is high (in other words if intuition is well-trained by experience), as well as expand the bullshit term if emotions inflate what you want to be true and the magnitude of blindspots.

Shutdown Blues

At this point, I think the over-grown children who rule us are just waiting for us to wear out our stream of scathing indictments about their small-minded corruption and incompetence until we collapse in exhaustion.  It's like what parents do with toddlers, except you're the one freaking out because you just realized your toddler controls the US congress and there's basically nothing to do about it and he's just waiting for you to calm down so we can go about the business of stopping everything until he gets his way.  There really is only so many ways to say that Republicans are currently out of their goddamn minds, after all, and even the stoutest citizen will run out of steam.  Out of their minds not so much because they've shut down the government, although it's extraordinarily dumb for them to do that for the reasons they're doing it, but because they're unwilling to process that they've lost elections and failed to stop laws from passing.  And, as a response to that, they've decided just to stop government from working at all, until they're the ones in charge again. 

And I'd be willing to hear the argument about how terrible ACA will be for the country, if they hadn't been making arguments so lacking in evidence, reason or good faith more or less since the thing passed.  These are the people who, when introduced to the idea that it might be a good idea to form a panel (which by law would not be allowed to be dominated by the healthcare industry) that would make broad policy recommendations on ways to stop the runaway cost of medicare, but are explicitly precluded from rationing care on an individual basis, ran breathlessly onto the TV and said Obama wants to set up panels to decide which seniors are worthy of medical care and ration it on an individual basis, which was an incredible distortion repeated in order to incite panic and opposition.  And now they are shocked and saddened that I don't take their hysterical, apocalyptic fear-mongering about every other aspect of the bill as a good faith argument.  Not to mention, the complete logical disconnect of a meltdown over healthcare legislation that was dreamed up the conservative Heritage Foundation, put into practice by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, and was generally considered a great success.

To recap, republicans are freaking the fuck out over a conservative approach to health care that their own party designed, and implemented successfully at the state level, because President Obama wants to bring that success to the nation at large.  This is incoherent.  It's childish.  It's dangerous and destructive.  And that's just healthcare.

The second hostage, besides a functioning government that the GOP has flat out stated it is willing to take, is the full faith and credit of the United States.  We've already been downgraded once by a ratings agency because the house was making noises that it wasn't going to agree to pay for the things it had already agreed to pay for by not renewing the debt ceiling limit.  This is insane.  If they think we're spending too much on things, they should have worked that out before they agreed to pay for it.  But that's not even their problem, they don't even care, they're just cynically holding the debt ceiling vote hostage as another threat to stop the implementation of the ACA.  The debt ceiling didn't do anything wrong, it was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm normally willing to declare both parties suck on any given day, and I concede that there's a larger problem where the powers that be pit the poors against each other in a culture war, while quietly continuing to fuck us over financially (has anyone noticed how little of a shit the powers that be give that unemployment is high?).  And all things being equal, I'd be willing to say this is just more of the same.  But all things are not equal.  This isn't a good faith negotiation that both sides are being stubborn on.  The congress passed a law, the president who championed it was re-elected, the courts upheld it and the polls are not in favor of shutting down the government, despite the uneasiness generated by the 24-hour panic machine in the conservative press.  The democrats are trying to implement the law that was passed and upheld, and the republicans are saying they'll blow us all up if they do, with a government shutdown, or by refusing to fund the government, any way they can.  There's no universe in which these two positions are equally unreasonable.  The democrats are simply refusing to make a deal with tiny toddler terrorists, until they can stop the tantrums and the threats, and do what they promised to do.

And the press, bless their empty heads, doesn't understand the difference between a negotiating the details of a bill before it's made law, and negotiating whether the country gets to function at all, even though the Republicans aren't running it.

And yes, I know that Tip O'neill and the southern democrats shut down the government during Reagan.  Again, this is todder logic.  Just because the southern democrats were willing to dock the pay of federal employees to make a point, while conspicuously not putting their own money where their mouth was, doesn't make it okay for the Republicans to do the same reckless thing years later.  Nor do I think you could make the case that the situations are a neat reversal of positions that are parallel in every way.


I would love to address the systemic problems caused by the corruption and foolishness of both parties.  But you'll forgive me if I'm a little distracted by the destructive mega tantrum being thrown by the GOP for reasons that are so detached from empirical reality that the only conclusion I can draw is that they're out of their goddamn minds.  We need to talk about the guy with the dynamite vest and the crazy eyes currently ranting in the lobby before we talk about Bob's tendency to steal pens for his friends, don't you think?

Guest Speaker

These are my prepared remark (which may be subject to revision) if I am ever invited to speak at my old college.

*****

Hey, how are you all doing today at the start of a new quarter?  Good?  Good.  Do they still take attendance to make sure you actually go to religious talks?  Well, that's good too.  It's wonderful to live in a system with such faith in the transformational nature of its fundamental ideas and practice, is it not?  I kid, I kid.  Well, I probably don't actually.  You should ask them why the daily practice of your religion is assumed to be so unappealing sometime.  Or better yet, ask yourself.  Either way, it seems like it would be better to ask yourself why it is necessary to corral an entire generation into actually practicing the religion that has theoretically been the center of your lives since you were children and is theoretically supposed to be the center once you are pushed out into the world without RAs and deans to check on your daily practice.  I mean, if you're going through the motions of a religious practice you don't find meaningful, would not both parties be served by that feedback?  You might be better off finding a practice that DOES mean something and your school might have to ask themselves why a religion defined as universally transformative doesn't seem to grab anyone anymore?  Or is this just me reading into something that isn't there?  Just me?  Okay.  What do I know anyway?  I'm just some guy.

*coughs*  But that's not what I came here to talk to you about.  Well, it is, in a way, but I didn't mean to start with such a cold slap to the face.  "You're doing you religion wrong!" I say.  "Well, thanks for being such a gracious guest," you might reply.  I should be gracious.  I want to be gracious.  But I admit I find it challenging.  Not very long ago I once sat where you sat, and I admit some elements of the school system frustrated me then too.  Well, when I say not that long ago, I mean 15 years, which isn't long ago for me, but is probably considerably longer for you when viewed from the slo-time field all youth are trapped in.  This is just an illusion of course, soon enough time will start slipping faster and faster until you want to grab the edges of your time bubble and beg it to slow down.  But you won't be able to grab hold to anything, just metaphorical air, and before you know it, you'll be 35, on the verge of the first of many happy mid-life crises and wondering how you got to be 40 pounds heavier and so far off track of the life you were expected to have.  And, if you're sitting in that pew and buried as deeply in the closet as I was at your age, you'll be emerging from said closet as well, blinking in the light of a new and confusing dawn, wondering how the hell you would do something as damaging and hurtful to yourself as pretending to be something you're not, for people who don't know what they're talking about for all these years.  As a side note, to anyone who IS gay and closeted and terrified and feeling trapped, there are more like you than you know, and if you email me at the address I asked to be put in the program today, I can introduce you to other Adventists who find themselves stuck in the same situation.  Ya'll would not believe how many gay Adventists there are out there struggling to reconcile being gay and being Adventist.  I don't know if you've noticed so far, but accepting the openly gay into the church has been kind of a hard sell so far.

But where were we?  Oh yes, the closet.  How could a good Adventist boy like me get trapped in such an unhappy place?  I know it must seem like the fault of the devil, or some-such, but it is really that hard to believe?  Growing up in this church, on what day are you told you are first a sinner?  It is the day you are born, is it not?  I mean sure, we look like innocent babies, mostly interested in warmth and milk, but what we really are, are desperate, born sinners with a crippling milk addiction.  That is the proper frame, is it not?  We are born to do bad things, and constantly tempted to do bad things, and it is only by the grace of Jesus that we are forgiven, and momentarily granted the relief that comes from knowing we are good to get into heaven.  Right up until our next sin.  Which might be tomorrow.  Or maybe it's now, as any of a million unclean thoughts flits its way through your head as some dinosaur from the distant past drones on and on about something or other in an assembly you don't really want to be at.  Really, you think of me as a dinosaur? Honestly kids, I'm only 37.

My point, so bluntly made, is that this religion teaches you, from day one, to hate yourself for being a sinner.  They never use quite those words, but the net effect of what you are taught is to believe, in the deepest core of your being, that you are WRONG and you'll have to be killed for being so awful, and the only way to remove this feeling is to beg an authority figure for a hit of sweet, temporary bliss in the form of forgiveness of real, deadly sin.  Deadly, because God'll kill you if you don't get right.  If you don't go through the motions, if you don't fall into line, if you don't go to worship 5 days a week, if you eat pork, if you wear jewelry, if you swim on a Saturday, if you do anything more heretical than clap awkwardly at a concert, if you think lustful thoughts when your crush walks into a room, if you're a dude and you want to kiss a dude, and if you think those things and do those things without forgiveness, without throwing yourself on the mercy of the court daily, you're gonna die.  And your parents are going to cry, and you're going to burn forever.

And I'm sorry, but the people you love are lying to you about all of this, all of these reasons to hate yourself.  Although don't be too mad, most of them are just repeating the lie their fathers told them.  The first lie is that you're wrong from the day you're born.   The second is that your have to grovel in despair over crimes both real and imagined, before authority, human or heavenly, to feel right. To be good.  I do not mean to imply we are all born good either, of course.  We are born to make mistakes.  We are born to be selfish, we are born to be compassionate, we are born in the tension between our darker desires and the better angels of our nature and living with other people born the same way.  So yes to be a jerk is in our nature, but so is being kind.  Isn't it weird that someone would tell you to focus solely on the one, and not the other?

The first lie is that making a mistake damns you for all eternity.  The second lie, is only authority can forgive a mistake.  In my experience, on a practical level, the first person to forgive after a mistake is yourself.  The second is whoever else your mistake might have harmed.  And then you clean up your mess, attempt to repair any damaged relationships, and then learn from what you did wrong.  And then doing it all over again when you fall down again.  Phenomenal cosmic powers are typically not a necessary part of that equation.

 The first and second lie, is that your mistakes are not just mistakes, they are violations on a universal level that will destroy you and everyone you know if the correct rituals are not followed.  They are an exaggeration of natural human behavior around making, correcting and forgiving mistakes.  They are normal guilt and empathy turned into an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The third lie is a contradiction.  The third lie is that all sinners are equally sinful and all sins can be forgiven and that some sinners are more sinful than others and not all sins can be forgiven.  The third lie is that Jesus loves you, except when you're WRONG and then he has to hate you, and that you can be welcome in a church full of sinners, except as a sinner, you are not welcome.  The third lie is that your body is a temple, and you must tend it, and it's okay if you don't tend it really.  The third lie is that all are sinners are welcome children of God but that only the gluttons, the liars, the gossips are children of God.  The third lie is that the holy spirit will guide you in telling you which sins are worse than others, which mistakes are sins and which are not, and that you never need to be taught the difference between your ingrown, emotional and cultural biases and the influence of the holy spirit.  The third lie is that only God can judge and that the church and the elders and the rest of you have to do some supplementary judging in the meantime.

It is not hard to go into the the closet, when you are told you're wrong every day.  It is not hard to go into the closet when you are told again and again that all sins are equal, but some sins are worse than others.  It is not a big step from, "I'd better not tell anyone I had a pork sandwich last night," to "I'm a guy and I'd better not tell anybody I wanted to kiss that handsome guy last night."  It is not unreasonable to hide, when you know your sin is one that God may forgive, but no one else in your community will.  It is not unreasonable to despair, when your entire community is governed by rules which humans must necessarily break in the course of being human, and that the rules your nature makes you prone to break will be punished, and the rules their nature makes them prone to break will not be.

 "Oh Betty, you shameless gossip, Jesus loves you, give us a hug."

"Oh H, you shameful faggot, Jesus isn't about loving other men, you gotta get out of here."

It's not hard to lose passion for your religion, when you people say "Jesus loves you" in a way that clearly means, "Jesus only loves people like me."

I would assert today, that the reason you need an attendance system to keep young people in a spiritual practice day-to-day, is that there is a core contradiction between the message of Jesus and the behavior of the church.  Your mouth says, "yes, come, there is love and room for all." and your hands say, "Well, except for the gays, and other unclean.  Hanging out with you freaks may have been fine for Jesus, but it won't fly here."

And so rather than admit that the church may have some work to do in reconciling its practice and structure with the message and behavior of Jesus (or may, in fact, be irredeemably broken as long as those who are in charge remain in charge), and rather than admit that there are things in your church that do not make sense, and preaches a lot of mixed messages which cannot all simultaneously be true, which leads to genuine confusion and unhappiness in the lives of its members unless they just stop thinking about it and go with the flow,we all smile and nod and go through the motions, pretending nothing is wrong.   And those of you with the socially acceptable sins can stay and worship, and those of us who have to hide more of ourselves than we're comfortable with, slowly fade away until it feels like we can breathe again.

I went into the closet for the same reason young Adventists fall away from the church every generation:  They can't reconcile what they were taught with their actual lived experience of the world, but they're not ready to alienate their friends and family.  So they and I smile and wave while slowly backing away.  And, if they're anything like me, they don't return because they find more beauty, truth and love outside of the Adventist church than they ever found within it.  No, the devil did not make me say that.

So, in closing, before I am chased out of here with pitchforks and torches, I would like to encourage you NOT to fade away from the church.  I encourage you to run way from it as fast as you can.  If this church embodies everything that is good about the world, then I encourage you to practice it whole-heartedly.  Conversely, if the practice and teaching of this church don't resonate with you, please don't fade away.  Please RUN AWAY towards something better.  There's no reward and quite a bit of pain in pretending to believe something you do not, and pretending to be something you are not for years and decades at a time.  There's no virtue in practicing something you believe to be a lie.  It doesn't matter what your parents say, it doesn't matter what the church says, if you don't want to be here, if this is not who you are, if you can't be who you are, and love the consenting adult you love and still be accepted as fully human and loved as the next person in this community . . . then you have to go.  Run fast.  Run far.  Run hard.  Keep searching.  But get away.  Get some space to breathe and be yourself.  I promise you there are more beautiful and wonderful and truthful things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Adventist philosophy.

For instance, they have a fancier hand-clap out there that they call "dancing."  It's pretty great.

The Gay book of Revelations, ch. 18

1:  After this I saw another angel, coming down the cosmic runway.  He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his fabulous splendor and glitter.

2:  With a mighty voice he shouted:  "Fallen!  Fallen! is the First Church of Babylon the Great!  He has become a dwelling for unhappy christians and a haunt for culturally acceptable but impure spirits, a haunt for every unclean thought against people who are different, a haunt for every unclean and detestable behavior that does not challenge the cultural biases of his congregation."

3:  "For all the denominations have drunk the maddening wine of his dissonance.  The kings of earth committed violence with him, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from his excessive and hypocritical luxuries."

4:  Then I heard another voice from the runway say:  "Come out of him, my beautiful gay children, so that you will not share in his sins because they have made you hate yourself, so that you will not receive his plagues of the mind and spirit that he would inflict upon you to keep you chained."

5:  For his sins are piled up to the runway, and a beautiful, androgynous god has remembered his crimes.

6.  As for you, my children, give back to him, that which he has not given;  pay him back double in love for the evil he has done.  Pour him a double portion from your own cup.

7.  Give him as much love and kindness as the torment and grief he gave you and the glory and luxury he gave himself.  In his heart he boasts, 'I sit enthroned as king.  I am not widower, I will never mourn and my beliefs and my kingdom shall last forever.'

8.  Therefore, in one day his plagues will overtake him:  dead to change, mourning difference, and in a famine of kindness.  He will be consumed by the fires he set to burn out the impure, forgetting his own impurity.  For mighty and wise is the Fabulous, Androgynous Lord God of the universe who judges him, and allows him to sink under the weight of the chains he has bound himself with.

9.  When the kings of earth who committed violence with him and shared his undeserved luxury see the smoke of his self-inflicted burns, and the bubbles marking his drowning, they will weep and mourn over him, and in fear for themselves.

10.  Terrified at his torment, they will stand far off and cry:  "Woe!  Woe to you, great church, you mighty sanctuary of Babylon!  In one hour your doom has come!  And how far can ours be behind, without you to sanction our rule and our violence with the authority of divine right?"

11.  The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over him because no one buys their shit anymore --

12.  Racks and racks of gaudy jewelry, ill-fitting clothes, every sort of phallus substitute made of wood, ivory, bronze, iron, rubber, ceramic and marble;

13.  racks of addictive and nutrition-less foods, dvds and books promoting divisive, legalistic and hateful thoughts, distractions from any real experience, confirmation of any bias through advertising and consumption, cattle and sheep and horses and pigs confined in misery and filth before slaughtered and packaged, and human beings hired and fired and sold as slaves.

14.  They will say, "the privilege you longed for is gone from you.  All your luxury and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered."

15.  The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from him will stand far off, terrified at his torment.  They will weep and mourn and release commercials identifying themselves as victims and advertising commemorative coins in honor of this tragedy.

16.  And cry out:  "Woe!  Woe to you, great Church, dressed in fine suits, black and pin-striped, and glittering with fine watches and expensive and stylish shoes.

17.  "In one hour, such great wealth has been brought to ruin!"  Every armchair warrior, and all who travel by television and internet, the radio and blog hosts, and all who earn their living from the grift and the cult of personality, will stand far off.

18.  When they see the smoke of his burning and the ripples marking his watery grave they will tweet, "Was there ever a church like this great church?"

19.  They will make sad animated gifs, and with weeping, moaning and sad-face emoticons cry out:  "Woe!  Woe to you, great church, where all who had shows on the air and blogs on the net became rich through his wealth, and his divisiveness, and his comforting confirmation biases and his cognitive dissonance!  In one, commercial-free hour, he has been brought to ruin!"

20.  Rejoice over him, you heathens!  Rejoice you children of the androgynous God!  Rejoice, gay apostles and prophets!  For our androgynous God has allowed him to judge himself, with the judgement he imposed upon you.

21.  Then a mighty drag queen picked up an SUV the size of a boulder and threw it into the sea, and said:  "With a fucking quickness, the great church of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again."

22.  The music of panflutists, identity rock and painfully repressed people will never be heard in you again.  No wage slavery and intellectual poverty will every be found in you again.  The pounding drumbeat of conformity will never be found in you again.

23.  The light of false hope and conditional love, will never shine in you again.  The voice of the pastor saying "grooms are like this and brides are like this," will never be found again.  Your merchants were the world's worst and most self-important people.  By your magic spell, all the nations of western civilization were led astray.

24.  In him was found the blood of prophets, and androgynous God's wholly different, wholly human and wholly loved, and holy queer people, of all queers who have been slaughtered upon the earth.

ch. 19

1.  After this I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in the heavens, from the cosmic runway and beyond, shouting:  "At long-fucking-last!  Cleverness, compassion and justice belong to our wholly beautiful and androgynous God.

2.  For helpful and just are her actions, and incisive and true are his words.  She has condemned the great charlatan who corrupted the earth by his violence and smallness and bigotry and selfishness.  He has avenged on him the blood of his beautiful, wanted, necessary and loved children.

3.  And again they shouted:  "At-long-fucking-last!  We are as free and as human as the rest of you and exist without shame or punishment for loving one another.  And the church that punished love in the name of love, sinks downward, forever and ever, under the weight of it's own hypocrisy and dissonance and shame."

Love in a time of fandom

I find myself more and more wanting to write that star wars/wolverine mash-up.  I call it:  Operation Mega-mash.  I think I can fit elements of Star Wars, x-men, Doctor who, stargate, firefly, star trek and maybe sliders into a coherent, if terrible story.  It will be the most beautiful train wreck you can't look away from.  Spoilers:  Wolverine pisses off jabba, is hunted by Boba Fett, who is an agent for the confederate government, who are controlled by goa'uld brain slugs created by the daleks.  Wolverine steals the doctor's companion and the ultimate villain turns out to be Q, or maybe tremaine, who, as so aptly pointed out by futurama, is just an intemperate fanboy with godlike powers.  So it ALL MAKES SENSE.

Undead Posts

Every time Gabe says another stupid thing, this dickwolves post gets a few hits (750 to date!).  I remain happy about my decision to stop paying much attention to them.  I haven't missed their comics, I haven't missed their insular, persecuted worldview, I haven't missed their inability to empathize with people unlike themselves unless people are shaking them furiously and figuratively yelling, "what's wrong with you?"

Some of the best aspects of the gaming community come from Penny Arcade, especially Child's Play, although I have small issues with that as well, which I will probably anger people by going into later.  Unfortunately, some of the worst elements of gaming culture come from penny arcade and fans.  Like instituting a no "booth babes" policy so women feel more welcome, but going out of their way to market and wear ostensibly pro-rape shirts that are hard to explain and expecting people to get over it because a gamer bro's freedom to say and do offensive shit and still be lauded and loved must never be questioned.

Look, I play a shit ton of games.  I've had my consciousness so far into Eorzea for the last few weeks I'm lost track of which body is my real body (Oh right, this fat one).  It's as legit a hobby for winding down/relaxing as sports or movie watching, obviously.

But I don't call my self a gamer because I don't think rape jokes are by default hilarious and necessary for perfect human freedom.

I don't call myself a gamer because it is about the least challenging thing I do every day.  I'd rather be known as a scientist, since that's my actual job, and because it's genuinely challenging.  It's like calling yourself a "book colorer" because you passionately love coloring books and have since you were a kid.  "I color inside the lines really well, I think it's really matured as a  medium." you tell people at parties moments before they drift off to talk to someone who does something actually challenging or meaningful with their lives.  I mean, at least people who knit can make you a sweater.  

Largely, I don't call myself a gamer because I don't want to be associated with or represented by gaming culture, and the nastier elements of Penny Arcade.  Especially the parts that think rape is just a harmless, funny joke that guys must be free to make at any time, and simultaneously what they will threaten you with if you are a woman and have the temerity to point out that those type of guys don't exactly making "gaming culture" a welcome environment.  I mean, guys who defend Penny Arcade under the banner "Team Rape" making people uncomfortable?  Unpossible.  Unless you hate freedom.

I don't call myself a gamer because I'm interested in associating with people who have a broader world view beyond constant, defensive justification of their own hobbies who don't freak out at the merest hint of disapproval regarding offensive behavior or someone reporting that their lived experience is different somehow.  And frankly, I'm tired of associating with immature dudes who can't handle their shit and have zero skills for coping with life outside the bro-verse.

Now Kiss

Do any sports fans ship their favorite athletes in slash fiction?  Or is that just something us nerd types are prone to do?  I mean geek fandom is becoming this giant mish-mash where everyone metaphorically grabs their favorite universes, mashes them together and says, "Kiss!  Kiss!  You love each other!" until Wolverine is a bounty hunter in Jabba's palace who flies the Serenity on smuggling missions out of Mos Eisley.  Maybe sports fans are just content to leave it at fantasy football seasons, and keep their erotic shipping way down in the depths of their most secret desires.  Unless fantasy football has more erotic/relationship content than I've been led to believe.

Asking for a friend.

Blind Spots

I have been having trouble relating to people recently.  I have trouble relating to people when I'm in a relationship.  I have trouble relating to people when they're in a relationship.  I have trouble relating to people when I'm in a relationship and they're in a relationship. 

I'm good at and comfortable with being alone.  I'm good at and mostly comfortable with being attached to and living with someone.  Got some problems with the in-between bits.

How I Built my Time Machine

I learned to time travel when I was 21.  Or maybe it was 20.  I'm not exactly sure when the exact turnover date was in retrospect, but at some point I just stopped and the world kept on truckin'.  I know this, because I just woke up and it's 2013, and when I went to sleep it was 1997.  They have a fancy name for and a hit-or-miss sitcom in homage to this phenomenon, but really, when you're the one experiencing it, the best way to describe is "time travel."

I know I'm not the only one staggering confused, into a bright, confusing dawn.  And I know there are still more, safely ensconced in their pods, skin coated in a non-adaptive shell that ensures that information born by experience will never penetrate the outer layer and disrupt the sleeper within.   Like me, they'll just keep replaying the same dreams in the same loop over and over until their shell cracks, until their shell has no purpose anymore, one way or the other.

I don't know how it feels for them, but for me it was and is like being stuck in a loop, an endless groundhog day, except unlike Bill Murray's character, the rest of the world kept on flowing by without me and I wasn't really learning anything.  Also no Andie McDowell. 

I have lived out the same crushes, over and over, with the same people, long after the window to forge a bond had passed.  I would reach out to them, later in the day, to clear up a problem we'd just had yesterday, to find they'd traveled forward in time a few years and had long since moved on.  They were just as confused as I was I think.  You don't meet a time traveler every day.  I did this over and over, and I could never remember my chance with them had passed.  Why would I?  We had been good friends just yesterday.  And it was only the next day.  It was always the same day, the next day.  How could their feelings change so much in just one day?

It was always the same day, and I was always that bright college kid full of potential.  Tomorrow I was going to fulfill my potential.  Tomorrow I was going to change the world.  Tomorrow I was going to meet the right girl.  Tomorrow I was going to find some sort of compromise between objective reality and the religious worldview I'd been raised in.  Tomorrow I was going to tell my parents I wasn't quite the person they thought I was.  Tomorrow I was going to figure it out.  As soon as it quit being today.  As soon as it quits being today.  Man I've had a long day.

I think there's a glitch in my software.  I think there's a glitch in my software.  I think it triggers when I can't reconcile my internal world with the external world and I just start looping.  I think I glitch when my internal and external worlds aren't flush.  I don't think I ever really wanted to be a physicist, I think it was just expected of me, and I, in my youthful idiocy, which I remember like it was yesterday (because it was), thought it would be a great way for people to think I'm smart.  "Oh you're a scientist?  How smart you must be." they might say.  And some did say.  All day, on that same day.  And I would glitch.  My brain would itch and I would glitch.  I don't feel that smart today. 

Having stepped outside of my time machine, having re-engaged my shell with the Flow of Things, having gotten on the fucking ski lift chair that I mostly just watch as it scoots on by, for a few precious moments, from time to time, in what I understand is considered Objective Reality proceeding at the Usual Pace, I think I have seen that I am not the best scientist.  It was hard to tell on that endless day, but I don't have the interest in it.  I'm smart enough to process the results, I'm probably smart enough to do it well, but I don't think it interests me enough.  The smell of it.  The everyday of it.  The culture surrounding it.  Although it might be too early to tell, I've only been doing it for a day.   

I don't think I have the right temperament for the Grand Pursuit of Science.  I think it is Not For Me.  I think I would honestly be happier just reading about it.  I think my passions lie in different realms that rest on a slightly different philosophical premise.  I think I know this, but I've been thinking that all day.  Has anyone noticed the sun has set more than a few times today?  Why doesn't anyone else find that strange?

I think I solved the biggest glitch though.  I think it is fixed.  I think that part of my brain has been de-bugged.  Patch 1.5 has been deployed.  I did that yesterday I think.  I think it's a hell of a thing to find men incredibly attractive.  I think when I felt that way, and I saw my father making fun of Liberace, it caused a glitch.  I think when my camp director disowned his son for serving the Grand Pursuit of Satan because his son was honest about what he wanted and what he wanted wasn't girls, it caused a glitch.  It was going to be tomorrow, but then it was today again.  Because tomorrow I was gay.  Or bisexual.  Or some fucking other that wasn't a straight boy sitting in church with a wife and four children.  Tomorrow I was asking that boy out.  Tomorrow I might get disowned or sent to reparitive therapy or get made fun of or get the shit kicked out of me or killed because I smiled at the wrong guy.  So today there was a glitch.  Today I can just watch the ski lift chairs go by, people chatting happily as they are dragged into tomorrow, further up and further in.  They are not screaming as they are dragged into tomorrow.  I really envy them for not screaming.

My therapist calls it dissociation.  I think dissociation is just a fancy word for time travel.  Well, relativity makes labels hard.  Either I'm traveling back, further back, fast enough to stay exactly where I am, or you lot have secrets you're not telling me and you're all rocketing forward into the future.  How dare you.  Tell me your secrets.  I must know.  Seriously, I don't want to die this way.

I pulled up anchor when I came out of the closet to frolic with like-minded sailors.  I left my Tardis when the constant abrasions of a bad relationship and the ceaseless flow of temporal sand became too painful to stay still.  I found a golden line attached to the Usual Pace and pulled until I was floating along the same as the rest of you. 

But time traveling is not a habit you give up easily.  It is powerful and seductive being a weird sort of timelord.  From time to time I still drop anchor when I can't make sense of the world.  When the world has to stop for a while so I can make sense of what I see tomorrow.  So I can figure out how to live with being a 20-year-old in a 37-year-old body.  "It's okay, I'm living out some sort of Freaky Friday narrative with no good jokes," I can tell nobody.  I've been trying to figure out how to process that today.  It's been today for 3 months now.

As powerful as my time travel abilities are, I can't keep my shell from aging.  I've become keenly aware that however long I linger on today, this shell will eventually reach it's natural expiration date without me and I sill be dragged on to whatever's next.  Tomorrow will eventually win the war.  Tomorrow is already winning.  I am losing ground against tomorrow.  Oddly, I am the least afraid of dying as I've ever been, even though I no longer believe in the traditional afterlife promised in my youth to all good stewards of the church.  It is still today, but I understand I could die today if the universe seemed hellbent on the idea.  It's not my idea of a good time, but ultimately one has to accept one is not an immortal god who will not be saved by science, Jesus or faeries.  One has to accept that one's shell has an egg timer on it that will eventually pop your toast, as the kids say.  Even in my time machine I have noticed that nobody's shell seems to get out of here alive, no matter what they believe, think or do.  The nice thing about today is that it is not yesterday, that long, endless yesterday, and I have learned things today.  Only a couple things, but I have learned them.  And one of them is that our shells are designed to grow and to bloom but also to whither and die, but that's okay.  So I don't fear dying, I just fear dying today.  Dying with all the shit I've wanted to do tomorrow undone.  That shit I've wanted to do since it was yesterday.  That shit has not been on the docket today.

I think a warrior would not have a problem with today.  Or tomorrow.  He would just keep slicing at tomorrow until it looked more like today.  Charging the borders between now and then until he'd annexed tomorrow and looted its precious natural resources.  Tacking hard against the wind and the endless flow of time to chart his own course.  Dancing nimbly as the ground shifted unceasingly under his feet.  A whirling cyclone of chaos and change, carving into the future.  I admire warriors.  I hear they have a guild.  I am thinking of applying.  I want to come out and play.

Tomorrow maybe.  I've been stuck in this goddamn time machine all day.

Moments on a Funeral Day

Cousin K will not stop talking on the drive over.  I got up insanely early, I'm too tired to do more than grunt in reply to most sentences, and yet the chatter never stops.  Just brief pauses, a taste of silence and the open road, before it is snatched away by tales of how he likes to tease his son with asperger syndrome about his liberal views on gun control.  Or how he likes to ride by himself into the mountains on his motorcycle where there are no cell phones.  I don't believe it.  I don't see how he can ride for that long without talking to someone.  Maybe he just talks to himself.  That I can see.

I like cousin K, but man he can talk.

******

Cousin D has jokingly threatened to shave my hair the same way he always does when I appear something other than conservative, republican and christian.  No, I would not have dyed my hair blue if I'd known I was coming to a funeral today with this half of the family.  I laugh amiably. 

"I will cut his hands off if he touches my hair," I think.  I'm not really violent, but I have a hard time with the constant "why don't you conform better to my sensibilities?" kind of ribbing I typically get from him.  I try and remember that everyone is sad today under the surface.  And this time, the visit doesn't have to be about me, my super gayness and how much I don't fit with this family anymore.  It's a funeral day and it's not about me.  It's kind of a relief to be honest. 

I end up reminding myself of this a lot throughout the day.

******

"So H, when you getting married?" my Uncle R asks.  I like uncle R, but I'm surprised he doesn't know.  There was a panicked flurry of phone calls discussing the horrible news when I first came out, but apparently it never made it's way to him.

"Not for a long time," I say lightly.  I decline to get into the specifics.

******

My cousin A is at the funeral home for the viewing.  We have one of the best talks we've ever had as she unloads about how hard everything has been.  Apparently she took a lot of the work load, along with her aunt V in caring for great aunt D (her grandmother) the last few months of her life.  A has three children and a full time job so to say it's been a sacrifice is an understatement. 

Her father, cousin D, won't come see his mother's body.  Neither will any of the other two brothers.  One doesn't even come up for the funeral (although how much that was a fear of flying and a refusal to face loss I don't know).  It is here I learn that cousin D has been in absolute denial since his mother decided to stop treatment a just do pain management.  he has been finding any excuse not to help, to be away, to not deal with the loss of his mom.  He does not have the tools to process this event, and because my family is built on Adventist patriarchy, there is no one above him to call him on his shit, in a tough love kind of way.  His daughter is furious at him.  Both because he hasn't been helping and he apparently spoke to her dismissively about all she'd done to help his mom.

I feel sympathy for cousin A.  She is good people.  Selfishly, I feel much better about the constant teasing from my elder cousins.  They don't have their shit together either, even though they plant all the right tribal markers.  But I imagine the death of a loved one is enough to make anyone burst a little at the seams.  I try and take it as another reminder to be kinder.

******

Great aunt D's viewing is lovely.  They did an amazing job on her body.  She looks peaceful, beautiful.  I can almost see her breathing.

The only thing that bothers me is the only thing that ever bothers me at a funeral:  the fingers.  The fingers don't look right with no animating force.  They look too flat.  They are not how fingers should look.  I don't like that so much.  But I march up and take a quiet moment to pay my respects anyway.  It's a funeral day, and it isn't about me.  Aunt D was always nice to me.

******

The service is rough.  Everyone is having a hard day.  My great aunt D's brother V died the day after she did, also of natural causes, but his daughter is there anyway, just to be around family.  There's way more Jesus talk than I'm comfortable with, and I have to remind myself again that it's not about me.  The belief that they will get to see their departed loved ones again is a balm to them, and I understand that. 

The pictures from her life are beautiful.  She had a hard life, much harder than mine, and made quite a bit with it.  She didn't have a room of her own until she was married.  She slept on the couch through her entire childhood because the houses only ever had two room and it was six brothers in the one and her parents in the other.  She became a registered nurse who married a non-adventist soldier, who died tragically in a construction accident at age 54.  She never remarried because he was the only one for her and she wanted to be reunited with him at the resurrection.  I'm not sure the world works that way, but I admire her loyalty and love just the same.

******

My grandfather doesn't recognize me at first.  I've been warned he's not "there" as much as he used to be.  He has a sharp motorized chair now, and an elevator device so my grandmother doesn't have to muscle him into a tall truck anymore.  Honestly, how she ever muscled him into the truck without it is somewhat amazing to me.  Even in a wheelchair he has enough left-over mass from a life of hard ranch work to make the task difficult.  My grandmother is the living embodiment of Norwegian stoicism and toughness.

He scoots over in our general direction, going off on a tangent for no discernible reason.  It's honestly hard to tell if he's just playing, or doesn't really know what's going on.  He was always somewhat mute and inscrutable even in the best of health.  My grandmother asks if he recognizes "this guy", pointing at me.  We make eye contact, and there's not a glimmer of recognition. 

"No, don't think so." he says. 

"Sure you do, it's your grandson H, V's boy." my grandmother says loudly, his hearing is going too.  He looks at me again and a light dawns, and then he smiles.  "Well, it's hard to tell, he keeps changing!"  We all laugh.  I have blue hair, and the time before it was green, and the time before it was a terrible pony-tail with a bad black dye job and the time before it was something else I'm sure.  It's a more insightful response than anyone was expecting, but I know what I saw.  He didn't recognize me for a second.  Mom says he's kind of confused about where he is and what he's doing in general sometimes.

I don't know what to do with or about this information, but I have sympathy.  His body betrayed him with a stroke, and now his mind is starting to slip a little too.  I imagine this is difficult for someone as notoriously self-reliant as my grandfather.

At the viewing he won't go in at first.  His daughter C finally gets him to go, forcing him to look.  I leave the room.  It seems too crowded suddenly.  He leaves with tissue in his hands and red eyes.  I think he is "there" enough to know his only sister is gone.  I suspect he is more "there" than anyone is giving him credit for and his sorrow is the proof.  Like the rest of the men in my family, he probably doesn't have a great tool set for dealing with his own emotions.  I wish I knew how to help him.

I shake his hand, and say good-bye as I get ready to leave.  Cousin K is edging towards the door, and the line of well-wishers snagging him into long goodbyes will only last so long, so I'd better be ready to go.  Grandpa snags my sleeve as grandma rolls him by a couple minutes later, and looks up at me with watering eyes.  He knows me, he loves me, he wants me to come see them at the ranch sometime.

"Anytime," grandma says.  No mention is made of my boyfriend.  But today is not about me.

******

My dad asks about my boyfriend M.  His interest seems unforced.  Makes sure I tell him "hi."  Mom does the same.  I have a good conversation with him about why he can't stand onions.  It was hard to tell at first, but I think things are getting better now that I'm not hiding the truth about myself.

******

Cousin K is very quiet on the ride home, it has been a long day for all of us.  I am very grateful for the relative silence.  We stop at a Mcdonalds in a gas station int he middle of nowhere.  There is a guy watching a video on the free wi-fi in the lobby.  He must drive trucks.  I don't understand why he'd stop and waste time in middle of a journey otherwise.

I arrive home to noisy, demanding cats and a handsome boyfriend who has been waiting patiently.  The cats would probably insist I switch those adjectives, but of course cats would.  I don't know how many funerals my family expects me to attend without my own emotional support in tow, but I don't know how many more days like that I want to do solo either.  I suspect bringing the man I love will cause a bigger stir than blue hair.  I think I have the right to having a supportive partner nearby on a hard day as much as they do and it frustrates me that it would even be an issue.  But it would.  Or so I imagine. 

I admit, I find it frustrating to find the line on what is right in dealing with my family, especially on days that are not about me.