Let's do the Time Warp Again and Again and Again

Currently going back to posts in 2005 on this blog and watching me whine about problems I STILL haven't resolved. That sound you hear is my banging my head on the table.

So many thoughts ...

... so little ability to share them.

I do not have a sound daily practice for reading and writing so once again I have far too many posts queued up in my head that haven't been written. I think we're about to the breaking point so expect some in the near future. I want to tell you they won't be entirely solipsistic but ... I can't promise that. 

Solipsism is the death of writing, I know, and it's probably why my writing is dead. I mean, you can only read about someone whining about how they can't get their shit together before you're just ready for them to get their shit together, or even be on the fucking path to getting their shit together and not wandering off in some field stepping on the same rake over and over and over and over .... 

But I yam what I yam. And someday hope to be less of a yam.

Coming to some conclusions though. Action items are forming. One is: I hate this blog. I hate the solipsism, yes, but also the format and the platform. The platform doesn't deserve to be hated, it functions fine, but none of the themes are quite what I want. They all feel pretty dated at this point. A few blogs I've seen recently (more on THAT later), have convinced me I need to spend some time imagining what I want this blog to be and working on it. Should I finally get that together, I will, of course, put a link here somewhere. I just want to have a website that accurately reflects me. I'm not sure I have that yet.

In the meantime, I may go back and prune some less fortunate posts. Maybe the words of a younger, much stupider me don't need to be burned into the internet forever.

James vs the Volcano

"I wonder where we'll end up?"
"Away from the things of man, my love. Away from the things of man."

Every now and then, when I'm deeply miserable enough, I remember Joe vs the Volcano and pop it into the DVD player. It's about a man who works at a job that is not just bad, but makes him feel sick all the time. Like he's dying. When DeDe asks him what's with his shoe, he says, "I'm losing my sole."

"I know," she says.

The only thing that pops him out of it, after countless tests, is confirmation that, yes, he is in fact dying. Of a brain cloud.

"So I'm not sick except for this terminal disease?"
"Which has no symptoms. That's right."

It's a beautiful fantasy of someone wasting his life away in the deepest, darkest bowels of industrial capitalism finding freedom, epiphany, love and a deep and meaningful sense of how big and beautiful and dangerous and tragic the world can be.

"I don't know what your situation is but I wanted you to know what mine is not just to explain some rude behavior, but because we're on a little boat for a while and ... I'm soul sick. And you're going to see that."

The journey is beautiful and whimsical. The characters engaging and entertaining. It is my favorite Meg Ryan movie. It is my favorite Tom Hanks movie. It is my favorite Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movie. It has some of the most thoughtful and heartfelt writing I have ever encountered in a film.

It is both secular and sacred. A deeply agnostic celebration of rediscovering that connection to something bigger than ourselves.

"Dear god, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how big... thank you. Thank you for my life."

It is not, however, an imagining of how to reconnect to humanity. Humanity, after all, created the machine Joe is escaping. Good or bad, with every scene moves him further and further away from civilization and the sick people it produces. It's not that he hates them, but he just can't relate to them anymore. And he can't stay in a place that makes him sick. And no one understands when he tries to explain.

"I have no response to that."

There is only joy as he leaves civilization behind. Living well is the only road left to him, given his new perspective. And, lucky unlucky man that he is, he finds another soul sick person to share it with.  And it's crazy and it's unbelievable and they decide to go for it, because what else had they been doing? What had the rest of the world ever offered them that surpassed what they'd found in each other? So they jump.

"Joe, nobody knows anything. We'll take this leap, and we'll see. We'll jump and we'll see. That's life."
"I saw the moon when we were out there in the ocean, shining down on everything. I've been miserable so long, years of my life wasted, afraid. Been a long time coming here to meet you - a long time, on a crooked road. Did I ever tell you? The first time I saw you, felt like I'd seen you before."

In they end they sail off together. No reunification with the human race desired or necessary. He was never dying. Convincing him he was was the last desperate attempt by the machine of civilization to kill him.

It's a desperate fantasy of a movie. And it speaks to me in places I forget I had about things I forgot I knew. Every now and then I watch Joe vs the Volcano and it tries to save my life.

Here's to remembering the things I already know. Here's to finding the soul sick and being understood. Here's to finding the path out.

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement."

Here's to waking up.

Meanwhile

I wish I wrote here more often. Or would actually get around to making a more "modern" blog. I feel like my writing reveals too much of how fragmented my thinking has become though, now that I've used technology to train myself into a state of perpetual ADHD. And I still haven't gotten over smart kid syndrome enough to embrace humility. I think mostly what would fix that is less gaming, more reading and writing and maybe less caffeine. But still, it's been a slog to get over myself and just write, garbage though my writing may be.

Acedic

I learned the word "Acedia" today. The wiki about it is quite instructive: "Acedia is essentially a flight from the world that leads to not caring even that one does not care." Ominously it says it can take it's final expression in suicide, which is a bummer.

I am not suicidal, nor do I think I will ever be as I enjoy suffering a little too much, and I think I care that I don't care, but a flight from the world born out of an apathy for both the good and the bad of it more or less describes my current state. I just don't know where I fit after leaving the church, I don't know who my people are, I, in short, don't know why I get out of bed in the morning. I am that stereotypical actor asking in scene after scene, "what's my motivation here?"

Acedia is described as a cousin to depression, although it is typically described as a more spiritual sickness, typically countered with a spiritual practice of some sort. Both the diagnosis and the solution seem resonant to me, but I have yet to motivate myself to do it. I'm not sure what my spiritual practice is anymore.

Part of the problem is that "spirituality" and "spiritual" are overly broad words with a definition I am still trying to pin down. The plain definition is "of or relating to one's spirit" which really narrows it down oh-so-helpfully. So the root word in dire need of coherence for me is "spirit." What do I mean by that? I'm not sure, but I think mine is a little sick. And it's difficult to talk about, in a world where dogmatic materialists roam the streets, eager to jump down my throat should I be perceived as believing anything too "woo woo." 

Don't get me wrong, I am proud of my critical thinking skills, I believe in reason and evidence. I'm a mother-fucking scientist and you're not, maybe I should mention. Most of the people who try to jump down my throat in defense of science and reason are, themselves, NOT motherfucking scientists, just passionate groupies who have forgotten how much they don't know about the world. But I digress.

But the humanities exist for a reason. There is a portion of human nature that is not fed by and does not function in the service of reason. It is not meant to. We are born with high-powered learning systems that help us process past events and convey their relevance to the current situation in the form of our feelings. Sometimes those feelings get in the way, or lead us astray, but they are generally quite helpful as the sum of all of our experiences with something from birth to the present (more or less). My goal is not to discard them or the body. I am not engaged in a holy crusade of intellectual domination over my animal nature or some clever hack around the body's limitations. Rather, I intend to reach some harmonious accord between my feelings, my body and my intellect. Somewhere in the sum of those things is something I am calling my spirit. Although still, that seems too fuzzy and vague for such an important idea. Still, mine seems sick, even though I find I have a hard time unpacking what "it" even is for you. 

So where should I turn when my spirit is sick? My general impression is that the secular world has no time or respect for even the concept of the human spirit, so I am left with the traditional guardians of spiritual knowledge: organized religion. Shit.

Christianity's out immediately for me, of course. However much it may still contain universal truths, the institutional sicknesses and authoritarian nonsense that pervades much of it still blinds me to the more positive qualities. As a man who tends to love other men, I don't find their current stance on LGBT individuals too welcoming.

Honestly, I'm terrified of getting caught up in another cult of some sort. I'm too skeptical to take anything at face value anymore, but still, my spirit is sick. I am worried about the intellectual concessions I might make in order to feel better. I am worried about embracing cognitive dissonance again.

This is probably a good time to do more reading on this kind of thing, if I'm being honest. Buddhism as a practice appeals to me, of course. I'm not sure I could ever believe in the more supernatural aspects, but what I've experienced of meditation leads me to believe it might actual be a useful exercise.  I guess I'm coming around to the idea that while supernatural beings may not exist (although who I am to say, other than to say I haven't seen any myself), spiritual practice may keep my mind and spirit healthy in the same way that exercise keeps the body healthy. Maybe intellectual/spiritual/physical exercise needs no story stronger than "you will feel better if you do these things." But I know this, and still find myself asking, "but what's my motivation?" This is the point where most people just want to kick me in the ass.

I don't think it would bother me if these supernatural constructs turned out to have some basis in "reality." As in, they are real and intelligent and out there somewhere. Mostly because I think everyone would be surprised at what they were really like. But since I don't have much direct evidence of that at present, I tend to think of them as ideological constructs to orient oneself toward. Even my intolerance of christianity abates a bit when I think of God more as a bundle of ideas and ideals to aspire to (forgiveness/charity/love/etc.) and prayer and weekly church attendance as the humble admission that we are limited beings who need to be reminded frequently of our higher ideals and to support each other in trying to embody them. This could be as true of the humanist as it is of the buddhist as it is of the christian I think. 

I am currently in search of the ideological constructs that I want to orient myself towards.  Whether those take the forms of pre-packaged gods one can find in the currently available pantheons or just some simple concepts expressed in a buddhist practice, I'm not sure yet. Maybe both! Maybe neither.

But I'm still looking. Because my spirit feels sick. Acedic.

Vaporware

I had a few things I wanted to write about today, but they have gone, gone away.
Not today.

This whole week has kind of been a wash.
I've basically checked out for most of it and nobody really seems to have noticed.

I'm kind of in an in-between place in my life right now and I'm still trying to make sense of it.
I've left the fold but not joined another yet.
I am foldless.
Ideologically formless.
Unaccountable and unaccounted for.

More pudding than jello,
more jelly than mellow.

Hoping to figure it out a bit at a time.
Hoping the thoughts that have been circling find a place to land.

This is an update with blank space.

Post-Finale

Like, the highly controversial How I Met Your Mother Finale, I have been unable to look at Seinfeld's previous seasons the same way after the series finale. I seem to be one of the few who both enjoyed those finales and found them a fitting end to each series, even though they weren't the end I saw coming. Actually, maybe BECAUSE they weren't the end I saw coming.

In watching previous seasons of Seinfeld, I knew they were kind of selfish curmugeons, but I never thought, "oh, these are truly awful people." I feel like a lot of the controversy came from some small misunderstanding about what these people were. Seinfeld finalized the series by laying out just how much those four miscreants had screwed over anyone else in their lives, because to him that was probably always how he viewed them (he and Larry David seem big into mining their self-loathing as comedic material), and the fans kind of recoiled in horror. "What kind of people have we been rooting for?" they asked. "Well," replied Jerry, "what kind of people did you really think they were?" I think for all of their faults, the characters were easy to get attached to, and I think suddenly pointing out that these were, in fact, terrible people made people a little defensive, because they had grown fond of them.

Of course, the complaint may have been largely tonal. The finale kind of had a "well, you four have had your fun at the expense of everyone else, and now the joke's over" kind of tone, which is kind of a down note for a comedy series to end on. It was the equivalent of turning the house lights on and telling everyone it was time to go home. Seinfeld had always existed in an absurd alternate universe, and to end on such a "realistic" note just seems discordant in retrospect.

Still, I find I appreciate it. Initially, I liked watching a "show about nothing" and just kind of laughing along with the loveable goofballs. Now, I can't help but notice how every single episode involves one of the 4 screwing up something important for one of their friends out of sheer selfishness, short-sightedness, and insecurity. Now that I rewatch it post finale, I can't believe I never really noticed just how terrible they all are, and how entertaining it is to watch one spectacular implosion after another. I think when I first watched it, I subconsciously attributed their troubles to sitcomical bad luck. But of course, they brought it on themselves every time. OF COURSE they did. How did I not see that until the last episode?

Nothing brings home "the party's over" feel of the finale and just how oblivious the four are, than the moment after the verdict is announced, and most of the series regulars cheer triumphantly and leave to celebrate. Left behind are the grief-stricken relatives, which are partly played for laughs (Frank Costanza shaking a collapsed Estelle shouting that he wants to beat the traffic out of there), but frankly the look on Jerry's parents is just devastating. They are deflated, defeated and sad. I find I want to hug them. And, of course, his family isn't even on Jerry's radar. This is not surprising, coming from the man who sincerely remarks that using less milk in his cereal is the hardest thing he's ever had to do. It seems a little too real though for a light-hearted show though.

And finally, they end right where they started, with the same conversation that started the series, having gained nothing and grown not an inch, on their way to a prison sentence they will likely learn nothing from. Honestly it seems apt. They are cartoonish caricatures of people, eternally selfish, narcissistic and shallow, who learn nothing. It's why they're funny. They'll never do anything surprising or out of character or new. And I love them more now than I did then.

The Last Man on Earth

I'm still fascinated by this show. It has very unusual pacing and is a weird mix of comedy and melancholy beauty, and I find it utterly fascinating. It manages to capture intense loneliness and cringingly awkward insecurity, poor social skills and painful, agonizing personal growth all at the same time.  Tandy's ongoing nightmare, where the end of the world erased the socially awkward side of his life entirely, only to have it return with a vengeance as he find survivors is so painfully resonant.

It's kind of a painful truth to realize that no matter how you change your situation, or where you go, the problems you need to work through to be a happier, saner, healthier person follow relentlessly. In Tandy's case, even the end of the world isn't a big enough distraction from the problems created by his severely arrested development. He hovers constantly on the precipice of self knowledge, but neurotically drives himself back into his old habits, and it's so painful to watch. And beautiful. I can't look away.

Totally not a Cult

I'm watching the new Hulu series called The Path right now. Which seems like a really good and a really bad idea. A surprising amount of the portrayal of cult life reminds me of Adventist life, which I am surprised to find surprising. I mean, we used to talk about how Adventism used to be a cult, but was now considered a respectable religion. We were all jazzed to realize we were not technically part of a cult, despite the many cultish aspects of the lifestyle. It is both helpful in confronting it, and borderline triggering.

The major difference of course, is that you can leave Adventism without threat of violence, which is important to note. Which isn't to say there aren't guilt trips, peer pressure, mind games and loss of community involved, but no real threat of force or overt coercion. So that's positive. Also, Adventists are strict teetotalers, so the pot and the ayahuasca would be right out.

That said, a lot of the portrayals of cult life were uncomfortably resonant. The jargon, that you all use so much you forget it sounds weird to outside observers. The focus on The Future, where sinners will be destroyed for their sins and a chosen few, the cultists of course, will be saved to create a bright new future. The prophet, widely believed to have access to divine wisdom. The strict legalism, especially concerning sexuality and marriage. The resulting sexual repression leading to weird and neurotic sexual behavior.

I'll probably keep watching it, but it's a roller coaster if you've ever lived anything close to something like that experience. On the bright side, feeling constantly weird is starting to make more sense to me. I grew up in a weird religion, that was totally not a cult* apparently!

*It just felt like one. Frequently.

That Hideous Strength

I'm two chapters into That Hideous Strength, the final chapter in C. S. Lewis' 1946 space trilogy. I'm reading through some of his work again from a post-christian perspective, as I believe I've mentioned. So far, it's been a lot of university politics, which was something Lewis dealt a lot with in his life. Having read Alan Jacob's biography on the man, it's interesting to watch some of his complaints about academic culture work itself out in his fiction.

In particular is the loathing Lewis had for the "Inner Circle," which must have been a dynamic that irked him in his dealings with people. Actually, you get the real sense that that kind of thing stuck in his craw. This is the all too human tendency to throw all principle aside in order to fit in with some exclusive social circle that fancies itself the cream of the human crop. The story starts with a small college campus being taken over by a small cabal of professors who fancy themselves the progressive element in order to sell off part of the college to the bad guys.

My favorite part so far though was the small aside about spending some time in a small wooded area kept by the college, with an ancient well at the center that has been preserved for centuries. The quiet seemed nice just to read about. I think I just need to get out into the forest more.

I don't know, the jesus talk doesn't move me much, and his views on women can be a little cringey, but there are some sensibilities C.S. Lewis had that I really resonate with:  college life is nice, people are frustrating, there's magic in the forest. Check, check, check. Good stuff.

Such as they are

The thoughts I have
such as they are
well up in the shower
or on my walk to the office
and before I get them out
onto paper
or maybe a screen
they're gone

I get distracted
by a small dog
some noises and lights
bells and whistles
half-remembered memories of a past life
an unending parade of human beings
and other stuff
that has left my thoughts
such as they are

Poisoned Sweets

I leave poisoned sweets for ants
and they take it
and they give it to their mother and their friends
and then there's some indigestion
and then they die
hopefully not screaming

 they send a scout from a neighboring colony
after they haven't heard from their friends
the entrance to the colony is dark
no sound but his own nervous scuttling
he doesn't understand shotguns but he wishes he had one
corpses everywhere
it's a real goddamn ant horror show
but he finds some sweets to take back
 back to his mother and his friends

 I leave poisoned sweets for ants

Perelandra review

Up at CMS. I wish I cared more about copy editing.

Badman vs Sad God

Batman versus Superman: No matter who wins, we lose

I don't know what's wrong with Zach Snyder. This is probably unfair, but it's what I walk away from all his movies thinking. There's just a vital, human element completely absent from his latest blockbusters (see also Michael Bay). I appreciate the attempt to answer the glaring moral issues presented in Man of Steel, but the sequel still feels like a robot trying to figure out what human feelings are and why it's bad to kill; a conundrum it largely fails to compute.

I think most professional reviews have addressed the host of cinematic flaws, so I just have a few bullet points to add.

• It really does feel like a series of scenes stitched together. I didn't feel much about the characters or what was going on, it was just a bunch of stuff that happened.
• Eisenberg's Luthor is not a compelling villain. There's a scene where he's babbling, and it's nonsense, and he realizes it's nonsense, and he just stops and says, "thank you for coming." "Hi, I'm Lex Luthor, I play the villain, thanks for watching the movie this evening." more or less sums up his character. No deep exploration of his motivations, just some awkward guy who doesn't make sense.
• The best part was when the music changed like it was a WWE match and Wonder Woman showed up. "Mah God, I think that, is that, that's Wonder Woman's music. Yes, she's here! The amazon princess is here!" She was great, but wasn't really on screen long enough for Snyder to fold/spindle/mutilate her character.
• Affleck was good as Batman. With better writing and a director that understands the emotions different facial expressions indicate, he could be great.
• Cavill was sexy, but I still loathe the politics his parents taught his character, framed for some reason as "good" in the movie. "You don't owe those fuckers nothing." is the main philosophy of the Kents, which is why their son turned out to be a sad murder god (whoever said this was brilliant) who thinks consequences are for other people. 
• Batman and Superman never resolve their taut erotic tension by making out. It might have saved the movie for me.
• I went out to get a second beer, because it was that kind of movie, and came back to a weird scene I didn't understand. "Wait, is that a apocalyptian fire pit? And, oh hey, parademons? Parademons!" Between that and Luthor's last unhinged rant at the end it's pretty clear the Justice League movie is going to be about Darkseid. On some level, Darkseid and his anti-life equation is probably the most appropriate villain for Snyder to handle, given that he seems to apply said equation to every one of his films. "Good, good, one last piece of editing motherbox, to suck all joy and vitality out of every second of it! Muahahaha!"
• Cyborg! Flash! Aquaman! 
• I wish movies would stop interrupting themselves to set up the next movie. A movie should naturally flow into the sequels, not launch the sequel halfway through and finish the movie still playing as an afterthought. It's like reading a novel where every chapter the narrative stops abruptly to throw in heavy-handed previews of the next chapter. Before, going, "where was I again, oh yes, all this business needs to be wrapped up I guess." Maybe in the era of widespread ADD this is the new normal?
• It would be interesting to see the ideas explored here, which are genuinely interesting to me, explored by someone who doesn't seem entirely cynical about the source material.
• You know what happens when you take the idealism out of DC comics?  NOTHING GOOD. Idealism is the only thing saving comics from macho violence porn.

This modern era of superhero films is everything I wanted as a kid. The tragedy is that I got it.

Saturday at the Museum

I managed to drag myself out to the farmer's market and museum again today, which is a small victory. Not particularly early, but still, I'll take it. There were 3 whole floors I missed at the museum's main building, so I took some time to wander through, before finishing on the gorgeous cat picture again. Portland Art Museum has a truly great collection of native american art, both contemporary and historical.

Of particular note this visit was the "Next Level Fucked Up" exhibit on the 4th floor by Vanessa Renwick. I'm not always too into A/V installations, but this one I liked. In it, there's a short video of an artist on one monitor talking about the gorgeous mural he painted in Portland decades ago, which is in danger of being destroyed by the building's new owners. He has been assured that the new owners are reasonable people. But he kind of wrestles with that, and how that didn't entirely reassure him, and he struggles to articulate why, because reasonable and art aren't necessarily good friends. "Do you know what I mean?" he keeps saying. Which is the part that sticks with me. Because what's great about art is not it's reasonableness. What's great about art is the way it tries to puncture holes in the reasonable and comfortable world you've built for yourself.

The joy of the artistic experience is probably not best summed up by, "well, this seems perfectly reasonable."

"Wow, this is kind of fucked up!" is where it starts to get good, right? Whether it's too real or too surreal, it should move you a little.  Jostle your good sense uncomfortably. Good art is a broadside across the bow of your sensibilities, a reminder to your conscious mind that "reasonable" is the mask your animal wears, and there are uncomfortably unreasonable layers always squirming around just underneath.

The museum is not where you go to be reasonable. It's where you go to bludgeon your reason within an inch of its life.

Bullets

• So that last post is an example of writing I want to get away from. I believe those things, but I'm still struggling to find a way to express it in a way that isn't preachy and off-putting. People are hypocrites and I don't think we've ever really tried adhering to our highest values out of a fear they won't really work when things get scary is the short version.

• I'm thinking of starting an email newsletter. Almost entirely because of the quality of the newsletters I currently follow (especially Warren Ellis and Ghostcop).  

• Still working on that "So you've hit 40" post. It's either going to be really long or really short and possibly really bad.

• In a recent newsletter, an author I follow described her depression as a thing in her head that wanted her dead. It was a really frank and thoughtful letter about living with depression. I think it's fair to say I struggle with depression, and it feels like a thing in my head that is not quite me as well, but I wouldn't say it wants me dead. It just wants me inert. Curiously inert. Never-changing, never succeeding, never happy. Coasting along short of happiness, but just clear of misery (although I hate to tempt fate). A fuzzy, lukewarm, unremarkable, grey goo comatose state that doesn't end until the inevitable heart attack. So, yeah. Depression sucks.

• I still want to retool the site. Maybe as wordpress. Blogspot is serviceable but I want more control over format. My failure to reinvent my blog really echoes my failure to reinvent myself though. I figure when one happens the other falls into place a little more.

• I took a break from stubbornly refusing to change by heading the the farmer's market and the Portland Art Museum today. I'm going to make a weekly thing of it, because they're both RIGHT THERE. I had the egregiously wrong assumption that the annual pass was $65 a month, but it's $65 a YEAR which is well worth it in my opinion, so I finally picked up one of those.
  I like going with friends, but it's really quite lovely to go on my own as well. No pressure to appear more artistically knowledgeable than I am, no social pressure to move to the next thing because the other person is bored. Just nice to look at whatever and linger at whatever speaks to me. And lingering on what speaks to me is a big need in my life right now. I can see this being a good habit.
  Of particular note right now are the 80s New York art scene installations, the giant and glorious painting of cats in the lower level connecting the main building and the modern art wing, the contemporary native american exhibit (indian taking pictures of tourist taking pictures of indians was kind of awesome), and the teeny, tiny animal sculptures, the name of which escapes me. Get your art on y'all!

Being is believing

I know I adopt the position of liberal scold far too often, but I'm really not on board with the righteous crusade to disrupt Trump's rallies. Not only is a terrible idea strategically, he actually has the high ground on this one issue currently because he is, to the best of my knowledge, NOT sending his supporters to disrupt democratic rallies.

I don't really weep too many tears for a disrupted Trump rally, although the optics are truly terrible, but I do worry about the hypocritical self-righteous streak on the left sometimes. It's becoming clearer to me that this poisonous idea that these are unusual times and it's important to put our usual moral values aside is not a phenomenon limited to republicans or conservatives. This was the justification for torture and how many other immoral acts ("there's a ticking time bomb, maybe, so we just have to kill innocent people with drones!"), and for me the issue was not that the conservatives had just chosen a poor reason to put aside their morals, it's that putting aside your morals for any reason betrays a fundamental disbelief that higher morals are actually better and more effective in achieving a better world. On the liberal side, this seems to thrive as well, with the conceit that only a liberal can truly decide who is and is not a monster, and therefore are the only people able to fairly decide when to abandon their moral principles. Which is the same madness, just maybe in lesser degree. I agree Donald Trump is frightening, I don't agree that unusual times means it's okay to skip straight from name-calling ("how did calling him names not work??"), to provoking physical confrontations at rallies.  Clearly not every incident at a trump rally was intentionally provoked, but you'd have to be blind not to see how many clearly are.

I truly believe you can win people over, it just takes time. It takes genuine empathy. It takes full acknowledgement of their humanity. I think even people like Trump himself can be talked down, but starting off with "you and your followers are monsters" negates that possibility entirely. Liberals claim to understand how counter-productive demonizing the other is, but do it at the drop of a hat themselves. I think the most important test of liberal values is when it's REALLY difficult to adhere to those values. Because I believe those values are not just nice fairytales, i believe they are truly the best guidelines to the best possible resolution for all involved, even when things get scary and it's easier to and more emotionally satisfying to resort to demonization and aggressive conflict. I believe it's possible to effectively resist hateful rhetoric and dangerous movements without compromising any of these morals "because these are unusual times," and without demonizing opponents and that it is, in fact, the better option for all involved.

We've just watched anyone afraid of terrorists throw their morals out the window for the last 15 years because "terrorists are uniquely dangerous," even though it's completely obvious that this state of affairs will not be changing in the near future.  So they've effectively thrown away their higher morals for more a expedient, incredibly violent moral structure purely out of fear more or less permanently. Why the left is so eager to do the same exact thing with Trump and his supporters, I don't know. No, no one's talking about bombing them, but they're starting to adopt the same, "you just can reason with these people" and "we have to stop them, by force if necessary" memes which are counter-productive. If you can see how demonizing the entire muslim world based on the actions of terrorists is counter-productive, you can see how demonizing Trump's supporters based on the actions of a few is counter-productive too.

This may not be everyone's take, but we didn't win the gay rights battle by telling everyone who didn't like gay people they were haters, we won it by millions of brave LGBT people coming out of the closet and standing up for their rights, but, and this is very important, remaining in relationship with people who needed and maybe still need time to get used to the idea. People started to realize gays were okay when they got the chance to hang around them a bit and the world didn't end. Changing hearts and minds doesn't happen overnight, you can't just burn the ladder behind you once you've decided you have enough of a critical social mass to just tell the stragglers who haven't come around yet to go fuck themselves with no social repercussions. That shit's not only counter-productive, it's immoral.

It is your job, as an idealistic person who clearly has better morals than your opponent (as we all believe we do), to keep the high ground. This means you must do what your opponents seem unable or unwilling to do: respect their humanity, firmly reject bad ideas while not demonizing them for holding them, embrace a little humility about your own views, and listen to theirs while attempting to empathize as much as possible. 

As tempting as it is to believe the self-righteous mic-drop speak is the  most effective tool at effecting real change, it's just not. Quick, imagine a conservative giving you a mic-drop speech about gay marriage or something.  Imagine their condescending tone, their lack of interest in your viewpoint, their indignant lecture filled with confident self-righteousness. Imagine how much you will recoil from their body language and tone and presumptive attitude. Whether the argument is better or not is irrelevant when you deliver it like a complete asshole.

People don't believe peace works because few are every really brave to truly try it. When we get scared we reach for the gun or righteous violence in some form. And we lionize the armed warrior who deals the violence so righteously. But the bravest motherfucker in the room is always the one reaching out with an open hand, even though they might get shot or hurt for their trouble, because they believe if enough of us do that, the threat of violence goes away and the underlying humanity of our opponents begins to shine through. I strongly believe they are not wrong. We can't expect people to behave like kind human beings unless we give them the space to behave like kind human beings.

Making peace is always a risk. Always. If you believe you're better than they are, then prove it. Be the bravest motherfucker in the room.

Lordy, Lordy

I'm mulling over some thoughts on reaching 40. As it has coincided with some life events that have not been pleasant, so far they are not too positive. The current status report is I'm just sitting with some stuff and mulling it over and staying away from people in the meantime. People frustrate me immensely right now so I've been avoiding them, although that's more a stalling tactic than a solution.

I'm frustrated at myself. I'm frustrated at people. Currently in hiding. 40 is looking good so far!

endless construction

There is some kind of format/name change coming to this blog. I like this minimalist theme well enough for now, but I'm definitely changing the title. Something like Curiously Inert or Pointless Exile.

Or maybe not. Much like the rest of my life, this blog has never been quite what I want it to be. Getting the urge to change it up again. I may actually go the whole domain/heavily modified wordpress route. I could make one myself but it seems like the effort/reward ratio is not high.

Open and Closed

Today I want to talk about open relationships. I've been sitting on this post for a while, giving myself some time to cool down, and I think it's about time. It is not my intent to disparage anyone in open relationships, or even open relationships in general, but I was in one for a couple years and it didn't work out so well for me and I want to talk about it a bit.

Honestly, I think open relationships are a reasonable choice, and if you and your partner are doing well and you both find the idea exciting, then more power to you. I don't remotely think that people who practice polyamory or open relationships are some higher and more enlightened form of human being, but as preferences go it's fine. Consenting adults can make any old romantic arrangement that they wish as far as I'm concerned. It's just obnoxious  when people think their preferences are superior by virtue of the fact that they have them. In your life, you will be tempted many, many times to assume your personal preferences make you some kind of magic. It is vital you do not succumb.

Having said all that, I'm not sure I'd choose to do it again. It turned out to be a profoundly painful experience, and the fact that it was a situation I agreed to didn't ameliorate that too much. To be fair, I think me and the ex failed open relationships more than open relationships failed us. I mean we made two crucial errors right from the start. We were using open relationships to try and fix a flagging sex life, and we chose it even though only one of us was really excited by the idea (that person was not me). But I wanted to see if it was something I could do out of simple curiosity and I wanted him to be happy so we tried it. The main issues were he kept to the letter of the arrangement but not the spirit of it (he stuck to the rules but didn't make any particular effort to take care of me or put our relationship first.).  Once he started sleeping with other people he stopped initiating it with me almost entirely. The other was we both chose over and over to continue even though hearing about his exploits felt like being stabbed in the gut every time and we both knew that. So that wasn't optimal either.

So here's some lessons learned from bitter experience, in no particular order.

• If your relationship is in trouble, an open relationship won't fix it. It will just aggravate underlying problems as jealousy and other issues crop up. If you think you feel resentful now, just wait until your partner is out sleeping with someone else for the first time.
• If the thought of your partner sleeping with someone else isn't some kind of turn-on or at least genuinely neutral to you, it's not going to help your love life. Jealousy and low self-esteem will not do wonders for your libido.
• The partner with more success outside the relationship needs to take some effort to take care of the primary partner, not expect the opposite.
• If the issue is that you just don't want to sleep with you partner anymore, don't try an open relationship, just break-up. Insisting you still find them really attractive but just have a headache for two years will fuck them up more than a simple break-up would.
• If one of you really wants to open it up and the other is extremely reticent, just break-up. There's nothing intrinsic in the open relationship that makes it feel good for the reticent partner to stay at home while the other is out on dates. If you think that situation would make you feel bad, trust your instincts.
• If one of you is not really having a good time, either from lack of success or jealousy issues from what the other is getting up to, close up the relationship and see if you both want monogamy again, or just break-up. There's no reason to stay in an arrangement that is actively making you miserable unless you're indulging in your masochistic side for reasons even months later you don't understand. And you wonder if maybe growing up fundamentalist and coming out of the closet means you've been finding ways to punish yourself both in and out of relationships. And why do you do that? Why do you have to carry the judgement of other people for them? Why punish yourself for being human?
• If you've been cheated on (a lot) and didn't enjoy it, consciously allowing someone to sleep with someone else will still feel just as shitty as when past partners cheated on you. Especially if they don't show much interest in sleeping with you anymore. Especially if they insist you keep their feelings before yours even so, just like your cheating exes did.
• It's a little awkward to date in an open relationship. If you value honesty and like to be up front about being in an open relationship, you will have much fewer takers in the dating world. If you don't think "hi I'm in an open relationship would you like to go out with me?" is going to be a power position for you, don't bother. You have to have a certain amount of game to make it work and if you feel like you already struggle on the dating scene when you're single, it will make it that much harder.
• If he's not into you now, sleeping with other people will probably not make him more into you. Work on your relationship first, or just break up.
• If the situation is causing you lots of pain and you're getting nothing in particular in return for it from your partner, for the love of god, just break up.  What are you, some kind of masochist? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?
• If you've known in the back of your mind for sometime that marriage is not in the cards, and there's an expiration date on the relationship, don't open it up, just break up.

So would I recommend open relationships? Probably not, but maybe that's just because mine was ill-advised bullshit that caused me lots of pain for which not only did I not get anything back from my partner, even acknowledgement or appreciation of how big a sacrifice it was for me. Really, I would only ever recommend it if your relationship is in a good place, and you both think it would be lots of fun to take it to another level (not necessarily a higher level, just different). Even then, if it's causing one of you pain, close it down and work it out or consider breaking up.

Whatever you do, do not limp along for a couple years, in an open relationship that is not working for you, hoping these knives to the gut will magically turn into unicorns and candy. That way lies madness. Close it or just break up. You don't have to stay in a relationship that is no longer working for you and is probably never going to.