I'm feeling a little pent up right now. My consciousness is circling my brain anxiously looking for an outlet, but I've connected them all wrong. All my old outlet nozzles are connected to nothing inside and my inner tubing keeps dead-ending just under my skin. I could bleed it out through my pores, but why.
But I gots the open relationship squirmies and I gotta get it out. I got the "my body wants to movey-groovey" and I gotta let it out. I got the words in a jumble, but I gotta write 'em out. I got ye ol' yarn ball of anxiety and repression and I gotta start pulling strings again.
Pulling strings is good. Pulling threads is life. I pulled one and left the dry desert of Reno for the lush fields of Portland. I pulled another and at the end were handsome dudes and lost knowledge. I pulled a third and knitted a nice sweater.
I need to allow myself the privilege of sweating and howling at the moon and cultivating and co-sharing with curious confidants before I get the deep down crazies.
Friday, March 06, 2015
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
Split blog disorder
I have a hard time deciding what to do with my blogs, which is why I have like 10 of them. Sometimes I think this blog might be better served by me just curating pictures/posts that strike a chord, letting readers see if it strikes a chord with them. Well, which is to say sometimes I think this blog is really pretty and meaningful and then I open my mouth and say something and it changes to my teenage journal. So I wonder if I shouldn't keep my text posts in another tumblr entirely. My short stories in another. I could probably do a whole blog just on the trials and tribulations of an open relationship (not too far into it yet, but just a feeling).
It seems like the platform I want doesn't exist though. I want a blog and a social network. I want to write about a lot of things on a wide variety of topics, but with enough flexibility that users can screen out the topics they want to hear about and don't want to hear about very easily.
I want a clean, ad-free, centralized content management system that allows to me to generate 1 to 100 types of content in separate feeds (blog/microblog/twitter/tumblr/research papers/thinkpieces/essays/etc) that users can subscribe to, comment on (either verbally in small sound files or in text), like or tag with an emotion where other users can second the emotion and/or add their own, IM, video chat, feeds organized into theme pages around various topics, formatting I can impose, that users will see as default but can subvert to their own liking as they need to. Why this doesn't exist yet, I don't know, the tools are there, they're just currently around in spiritual and pragmatic wastelands like FB and Twitter.
There's a better blogging/social media/net communication portal just waiting to happen where we can talk to each other, and share the things we want to share in a wide variety of formats without unduly imposing on subscribers and the first person to realize it is going to be successful beyond their wildest dreams.
There's a better blogging/social media/net communication portal just waiting to happen where we can talk to each other, and share the things we want to share in a wide variety of formats without unduly imposing on subscribers and the first person to realize it is going to be successful beyond their wildest dreams.
Showdown at the OKC
So, I'm back on the OKC just to see what's out there. I'm listed as bisexual and in an open relationship so I don't expect to get a lot of attention. So far I've only been awkwardly asked to join some kind of bear cult and told I shouldn't haven't shaved, which is more or less what I expected from Portland in the first week. Which is A-okay, honestly, not feeling super confident right now. The transition to an open relationship was not entirely smooth for me emotionally , but I'm doing okay with the idea now.
That said, my impulse here is more to continue to try and get my shit together than it is to jump back into dating a lot. Work on learning piano, journal, practice my Japanese, actually read, try and write coherently about what I read, get some goddamn exercise, if only to extend the amount of time I'll have to procrastinate later in life, etc. Maybe get out of the house in some fashion where I'll end up meeting people and then if I click with someone out there that's fine.
But I think I've learned enough to know that my relationship with other people is only as good as my relationship with myself and if I'm being honest with myself it's the relationship with myself that needs work again. So maybe I need to listen to my gut on this one.
That said, my impulse here is more to continue to try and get my shit together than it is to jump back into dating a lot. Work on learning piano, journal, practice my Japanese, actually read, try and write coherently about what I read, get some goddamn exercise, if only to extend the amount of time I'll have to procrastinate later in life, etc. Maybe get out of the house in some fashion where I'll end up meeting people and then if I click with someone out there that's fine.
But I think I've learned enough to know that my relationship with other people is only as good as my relationship with myself and if I'm being honest with myself it's the relationship with myself that needs work again. So maybe I need to listen to my gut on this one.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Procrastination vs Death
I don't feel like I've been doing much with my spare time for a while. Development generally consists of exciting and painful growth phases followed by rest and recuperation phases, but this year+ hibernation I'm crawling out of may have been a bit excessive. I have many times thought how nice it would be to have a time or suspended animation machine that would let me wake up 50 years, time having neatly dealt with all my little problems by serenely passing them by. To procrastinate then, is to be a frustrating mix of wise and foolish: wise enough to know all of our problems fade to insignificance with the passage of time but foolishly succumbing to the temptation to do nothing, hoping there will be enough time on our personal clock after to do something else or perhaps resting lightly in the delusion that maybe I, for the first time in history, will turn out to be immortal. The singularity is right around the corner you know! Or perhaps Jesus. Or maybe the Buddha or Odin or Allah? Who can give me immortality? Is it Ra, god of the sun? I can be in Egypt by morning. I have a lot of procrastinating to do and I need more time to do it.
Of course, the universe is not required to play along with my delusions so I remain obstinately mortal and procrastination, by any definition, is still more or less just wasting my own time. Moreover, the universe, obstinately unconcerned with my hopes dreams and personal and psychological well-being, moves on and moves objects and people as it will and occasionally the little space I've built for myself where I allow myself the delusion of sameness and stability and safety keeps the walls but loses the floor and my dogmatic belief that I can get my shit together if I just float here in sameness long enough gets shattered by the realization that I've been sinking for a while now and if I want to see the sunlight again I'm going to have to get my shit together enough NOW to at least swim for it.
Which is to say, getting one's shit together is a laudable and reasonable aspiration but asking the world to, you know, maybe stop for a while in the meantime is not as much as such. I keep asking the world to stop and it keeps laughing and at some point maybe I should take the hint, you know?
The latest Wile E. Coyote freefall moment was prompted by my partner's request for an open relationship, which truly I never saw coming. It has not been the end of the world, although I initially processed it like it was approaching that, although I believe we have worked through it with an arrangement more or less to my satisfaction and comfort and I believe I have made the best choice of the choices currently available to me. But it has been yet another stark reminder that even people I know well can and will surprise me and that the universe is under no obligation to proceed as I have foreseen it.
There is a form of monogamy, that I often practice, where one is tempted, if not outright encouraged, to believe that what is joined should never be rent asunder and that who I am now is who I must always be and how I feel now is how i must always feel and what I have with another person will always be there for me to take comfort in and I'm convinced that this is maybe not the best version of monogamy out there. It's too tempting to let it slide into personal procrastination where maybe I stop taking care of myself (check) and stop taking care of the other person (sometimes check) because we are committed and we don't have to keep trying so hard to be visibly "mate material" all the time and that what is "good" about it is the eternal commitment and co-dependent attachment of it all.
It seems to me like it must be better to take the world as it is, on the only terms it will offer itself to me, and accept that the only constant is change and that a commitment to change together is a fine thing, but the recognition that a given relationship may not work for all parties forever is not such a bad thing, in that it provides incentive to maintain oneself and tend the relationship. So at least if it does end I can take considerable comfort in the knowledge that I was engaged and and kept up my end of the arrangement as best I could and really that's all I can ask of myself in any relationship. This is not at odds with monogamy in theory to be sure, many fine relationships embrace the uncertainty, but it may be at odds with monogamy as frequently practiced, where fear of uncertainty leads to an unrealistic sense of security and procrastination and jealousy and co-dependence. To be in a healthy monogamous relationship then may necessitate recognizing one's partner is tempted by others and is still attracted to others and sometimes wants different things than you and is sometimes a really different person than you but can be trusted to abide by the terms of your relationship (which are there, even if only implied) and can be trusted to come home to you even if someone else merits a lingering glance from time to time. More to the point, letting oneself forget the fickle and chaotic nature of the universe and the people within it leaves one more flat-footed when the rug is inevitably pulled out again.
So to me, at this point, the open relationship is just extending that trust to an admittedly scarier, and admittedly socially controversial degree, of letting the other partner date casually and meet and fuck new people and trusting them to abide by the explicit agreement one might have made about that kind of thing and trusting them to still want to come home to me. The particulars of the agreement are very much specific to the needs of the individuals within the relationship, but what's important is that there is an agreement and a good faith effort to abide by it. Not that it is better than monogamy per se, not that I don't personally have my concerns about the whole endeavor, but I think it's the best fit for us right now and it's been the conclusion of both of us staring at the frightening uncertainty of it all face on, and doing our best to come to terms with it. My partner and I are considerable late bloomers in our own way and I think the relationship had stalled while we both avoided the implications of that. Is an open-relationship the best answer for that? Maybe not, but we don't see another we're happier with at the moment.
I have few beliefs these days, but I do believe in grown adults get to come to their own arrangement in who they love and how they love them and I believe in embracing uncertainty and learning to be nimble in facing life's challenges rather than constantly trying to plant oneself on shifting sand, even though I am objectively terrible at actually being nimble (emotionally or otherwise). So while I am not super thrilled at the wake-up call, I am grateful to once again be attempting to face the world as it is and preparing myself to adjust to the world as it will be. I am grateful to be awake.
And while it's clear I'm still going to struggle with depression and insecurity and self-esteem in the near future, it's becoming clearer once again that procrastination is a habit best left behind me. I keep building safe, unchanging places and getting frustrated when the floor falls out, and building a new eternal delusion, only to have the floor fall out again. And again. And again. Maybe it's time to admit it's just trap doors all the way down and try something new.
Of course, the universe is not required to play along with my delusions so I remain obstinately mortal and procrastination, by any definition, is still more or less just wasting my own time. Moreover, the universe, obstinately unconcerned with my hopes dreams and personal and psychological well-being, moves on and moves objects and people as it will and occasionally the little space I've built for myself where I allow myself the delusion of sameness and stability and safety keeps the walls but loses the floor and my dogmatic belief that I can get my shit together if I just float here in sameness long enough gets shattered by the realization that I've been sinking for a while now and if I want to see the sunlight again I'm going to have to get my shit together enough NOW to at least swim for it.
Which is to say, getting one's shit together is a laudable and reasonable aspiration but asking the world to, you know, maybe stop for a while in the meantime is not as much as such. I keep asking the world to stop and it keeps laughing and at some point maybe I should take the hint, you know?
The latest Wile E. Coyote freefall moment was prompted by my partner's request for an open relationship, which truly I never saw coming. It has not been the end of the world, although I initially processed it like it was approaching that, although I believe we have worked through it with an arrangement more or less to my satisfaction and comfort and I believe I have made the best choice of the choices currently available to me. But it has been yet another stark reminder that even people I know well can and will surprise me and that the universe is under no obligation to proceed as I have foreseen it.
There is a form of monogamy, that I often practice, where one is tempted, if not outright encouraged, to believe that what is joined should never be rent asunder and that who I am now is who I must always be and how I feel now is how i must always feel and what I have with another person will always be there for me to take comfort in and I'm convinced that this is maybe not the best version of monogamy out there. It's too tempting to let it slide into personal procrastination where maybe I stop taking care of myself (check) and stop taking care of the other person (sometimes check) because we are committed and we don't have to keep trying so hard to be visibly "mate material" all the time and that what is "good" about it is the eternal commitment and co-dependent attachment of it all.
It seems to me like it must be better to take the world as it is, on the only terms it will offer itself to me, and accept that the only constant is change and that a commitment to change together is a fine thing, but the recognition that a given relationship may not work for all parties forever is not such a bad thing, in that it provides incentive to maintain oneself and tend the relationship. So at least if it does end I can take considerable comfort in the knowledge that I was engaged and and kept up my end of the arrangement as best I could and really that's all I can ask of myself in any relationship. This is not at odds with monogamy in theory to be sure, many fine relationships embrace the uncertainty, but it may be at odds with monogamy as frequently practiced, where fear of uncertainty leads to an unrealistic sense of security and procrastination and jealousy and co-dependence. To be in a healthy monogamous relationship then may necessitate recognizing one's partner is tempted by others and is still attracted to others and sometimes wants different things than you and is sometimes a really different person than you but can be trusted to abide by the terms of your relationship (which are there, even if only implied) and can be trusted to come home to you even if someone else merits a lingering glance from time to time. More to the point, letting oneself forget the fickle and chaotic nature of the universe and the people within it leaves one more flat-footed when the rug is inevitably pulled out again.
So to me, at this point, the open relationship is just extending that trust to an admittedly scarier, and admittedly socially controversial degree, of letting the other partner date casually and meet and fuck new people and trusting them to abide by the explicit agreement one might have made about that kind of thing and trusting them to still want to come home to me. The particulars of the agreement are very much specific to the needs of the individuals within the relationship, but what's important is that there is an agreement and a good faith effort to abide by it. Not that it is better than monogamy per se, not that I don't personally have my concerns about the whole endeavor, but I think it's the best fit for us right now and it's been the conclusion of both of us staring at the frightening uncertainty of it all face on, and doing our best to come to terms with it. My partner and I are considerable late bloomers in our own way and I think the relationship had stalled while we both avoided the implications of that. Is an open-relationship the best answer for that? Maybe not, but we don't see another we're happier with at the moment.
I have few beliefs these days, but I do believe in grown adults get to come to their own arrangement in who they love and how they love them and I believe in embracing uncertainty and learning to be nimble in facing life's challenges rather than constantly trying to plant oneself on shifting sand, even though I am objectively terrible at actually being nimble (emotionally or otherwise). So while I am not super thrilled at the wake-up call, I am grateful to once again be attempting to face the world as it is and preparing myself to adjust to the world as it will be. I am grateful to be awake.
And while it's clear I'm still going to struggle with depression and insecurity and self-esteem in the near future, it's becoming clearer once again that procrastination is a habit best left behind me. I keep building safe, unchanging places and getting frustrated when the floor falls out, and building a new eternal delusion, only to have the floor fall out again. And again. And again. Maybe it's time to admit it's just trap doors all the way down and try something new.
Friday, February 06, 2015
Status Report
Feb 5, 2015 (6 days before my 39th birthiversary).
I have emerged from yet another long hibernation to survey the unattended clutter that has accumulated while I slept and find myself, once again, displeased. Troubled along so many vectors I have a hard time plotting the shape of it. Maybe it's best to tackle this topically.
ROMANCE
While it's probably not a terrific idea to go into details, new and exciting challengers have emerged in the romantic life of me, super-pal Jimmy Wholesome, that have prompted the current round of general house-cleaning. While I am grateful for the boot to the ass the universe has graciously bestowed upon me as motivation to clean house, I resent the general untidiness of the universe and it's inhabitants and lament my inability to self-motivate. As it turns out my life needs constant tending. Who knew.
WORK
Is a mess and a mess I've been unhappy with a long time, so long even I am tired of hearing myself talk about it. But it doesn't have to be a mess forever. I am optimistic I will figure out a good course of action for myself. Eventually. Hopefully sometime before the heat death of the universe.
SOCIAL LIFE
I have let my social life whither on the vine in the last year or so. So I am preparing a new socializing push to refresh existing friendships and forge new ones. This will likely involve getting out of the house. And maybe being on a schedule that leaves me free in the evenings when, I'm told, human types like to congregate and talk about consumer products and TV shows. But I look forward to it. I've got the chops, I just need to sharpen them up.
GENERAL EXISTENTIAL MALAISE
I think most people just call it depression, but I think I've been struggling with it for years. Coming out of the closet made everything, in many ways, better, and I am grateful for that. Although there are some of other core problem areas to sift through. I have a hard time finding my motivation to thrive for a variety of reasons I am still trying to understand and I'm very hard on myself for it. I never felt a part of my childhood church culture and now that I've left it I find I haven't found a place to land in the "secular world" where I feel I belong. I have not found my people or my place or my purpose (the all-important 3 p's) and I think it leaves me feeling generally untethered and listless and anxious. For some the answer is to just DO something which I understand, but I also understand myself and my tunnel vision obsessive tendencies so I'm loathe to just grasp on to something and go with it for fear I'll wake up 10 years down the line and wonder, "what the fuck am I doing?" If I can train myself to recognize "the wrong path" sooner rather than later maybe I'll be more comfortable of the idea of "just doing something."
ANXIETY
I am generally an anxious creature, which I am working on. This is something that developed later in life and I am not thrilled with it. Most days I have a general feeling that I need to be anxious about something, about who I am or what I'm doing or what I've done and I generally fill in that gap with some reason without really thinking about it. This is probably my strongest reason and motivation to exercise as I know from experience that helps a great deal. I've also set up a reading corner of my own with a turntable and a nice reading chair to provide myself with some "chill the fuck out" space. Sometimes the inner animal can't be reasoned with, it just has to be soothed.
CRIME & PUNISHMENT
I've been having tremendous difficulty the last few years letting myself move forward in any meaningful way, or even allowing myself the pleasure of consuming art that I would find very edifying. I pretty consciously know what I want to work on and I generally watch myself in amazement as I deny myself the privilege. There are some truly wonderful and imaginative TV shows for instance that I would love to start/finish but I generally choose to marathon trashier TV that I'm not that interested in instead. It's become pretty clear to me that some part of me desperately wishes to be punished, for being flawed or being gay/bi, or being something other than what other people want me to be. I carry the explicit and implicit judgements of other people FAR too readily and I really need to stop, but I find it really challenging even though I know pretty much what the issue is at this point. I would dearly love to stop carrying the real and imagined judgements of other people forever though. Note to self.
WRITING
There's really nothing standing in the way of me writing except my own foolish self. The above mentioned sense of deserving no good thing and maybe some more punishment and a REALLY bad case of smart kid syndrome are the big culprits here. It's clear to me that I need to write to be a happy person, not because it's going to make me rich and famous or well-liked but because I have thoughts I want to articulate and things I want to share and stories ideas that pop into my head non-stop that I would love to realize in some fashion. But the smart kid in me won't let me do it without being perfect at it the first time and the silly sadist in me wants to punish me for not being a smart kid. It's silly bullshit and I'm tired of it. I hope to get past it and finally write stories I'm happy with before the Big Crunch and the next Big Bang recreate the universe anew. The same goes for my stalled progress in learning piano and Japanese.
POLITICS
Man, fuck politics. The corruption and structural stagnation that has brought our government to a standstill and feeds and endless culture war seems insurmountable to me right now. I am sure it is NOT, but jesus. We desperately need to get our collective shit together. I find it all very depressing.
SCIENCE and WOO
I've been reading a lot more "WOO" material recently, including books on near-death experiences, evidence of life after death, UFO sightings, and so forth. Except Sasquatch which I find completely uninteresting. "A big primate lives in the woods!" Who cares. While I am myself a scientist and believe strongly that it's a good way of accumulating many types of knowledge, I don't really love the way people talk about it sometimes. I've been struggling to articulate it in ways that don't make me sound crazy. People seem to have a hard time distinguishing between beliefs that have some scientific evidence in support, and beliefs about science that reinforce their worldview. Science is good but it is not all that is true or necessary to consider. Reason is good but feelings exist and have their moments of primacy and importance. I largely read woo material because I've always been interested in what's outside the comfortable assumptions of the crowd and I like entertaining a reality bigger and more interesting than the current bullshit. So I like to read about other people's strange experiences and consider whether they might actually be true, or at the very least indicative of a grander, more interesting universe than the common wisdom currently assumes. Do I think they're all telling the truth? No. Do I think some of them might be a little delusional or unbalanced? Yes. Do I think that mean's it's all bunk? Not necessarily. Anecdotal data is not as good as scientific data, but it is evidence of something nonetheless, and even if it just turns out to be evidence of the many twists and turns of human psychology I find that in and of itself interesting. So I don't know how much of it is real, and to be truthful you don't either, we just have beliefs about "how the world must really be." But I'm happy to consider these other possibilities and not assume can't have experienced something I haven't experienced. I just don't recommend making any big life decisions or wasting too much time on unsupported anecdotes or just really incomplete information which is where I think people tend to go wrong either way. So no, I'm not falling off the deep end just yet, just looking into the water and wondering how deep it goes.
MORTALITY
I used to be terrified of dying with sins left unforgiven and burning in hell. Or dying before accomplishing God's purpose for me here on earth. Or dying before seeing the prequels Lucas was rumored to be working on like a decade before they came out, which was an extremely misplaced fear as it turns out. And then dying and having it be nothing. And then dying and having it be something worse. And then just the ending of fabulous, wonderful, conscious me (despite the fact that my consciousness disintegrates nightly). Now I'm just worried about dying before I get my shit together. Of dying before having said all the things I want to say and art left unmade and people left unloved. Of having wasted my time dithering on this anxious bullshit rather than using the time I have doing what I want to do. Which is a nicer fear of mortality really. But really the ultimate currency is time and I want to spend it better. Relatedly but not causally, I'm also thinking of volunteering in a hospice somewhere in town. It seems important to tackle death head-on both in oneself and in others and I can think of no better place to start.
SPIRITUALITY
I've been finding myself less hard on religion recently. For all the problems in most major world religions, they still seem to consciously address and attempt to answer important existential questions for more directly than the secular world which just seems to shrug at some of it, as if embarrassed to be associated with anything religion even talks about. I'm still trying to define for myself what spirituality is and why it's important to me, but it is. I will not likely be returning to christianity in this lifetime and will also avoid anything predicated on making you feel like shit for existing and offering themselves as the only absolution (because the mind fuck there, once you see it, is too obvious to ignore). I may try one of the westernized buddhism churches in town soon, just to see. I'm not sure I can even buy into buddhism that deeply, but I think spirituality has a value, and spiritual practices may be very useful in finding emotional and intellectual peace of some sort, even if there's nothing supernatural involved. I respect the search for meaning, I respect the search for peace, I don't think religion ruins everything and I don't think all religious believers are nuts or delusional and I'm trying to find a way to live with them more or less amiably without too much antagonism. To be sure, it seems like religious types could be meeting me half-way a bit more on that, but it's not an excuse to succumb to cynicism. Who knows, maybe I'll find something half-worth believing in, or at least practicing.
WHEREVER I GO, THERE I AM
It's weird to be days away from 39 and still be writing self-absorbed "what the fuck am I doing?" updates like this. This is really, really not how I imagined yours truly at age 39. I'm not quite sure what I expected, but I think I expected ... more grown-upedness? Confidence? Capability? Stability? Clarity? More and more I feel I can be that guy. Or perhaps am becoming that guy. I can feel him impatiently wiggling and straining against the current man-child artifice I've carelessly worn for years, wanting to take charge. Or at least have a say. My child-self is a nice kid, but maybe he shouldn't be running the show, you know? But I am still proud of myself sometimes. Yes, I'm a bit of a late-bloomer, but I came out of the closet, I moved to a better city, I left an abusive relationship and I'm asking myself a lot of the right questions. Questions I hope to answer before the universe forces the issue one way or another. Or ends in a fiery conflagration only those outside of time and space will be privileged to witness.
And that's the update this year. For those of you still reading, I thank you. For those of you who quit two paragraphs in, you're off the list! Not enough changes to talk about, a lot of omphaloskepsis, but there it is. Me in a nutshell. Cracking ever-so-gently.
James Haus
Age 39(ish)
Transmission ends
I have emerged from yet another long hibernation to survey the unattended clutter that has accumulated while I slept and find myself, once again, displeased. Troubled along so many vectors I have a hard time plotting the shape of it. Maybe it's best to tackle this topically.
ROMANCE
While it's probably not a terrific idea to go into details, new and exciting challengers have emerged in the romantic life of me, super-pal Jimmy Wholesome, that have prompted the current round of general house-cleaning. While I am grateful for the boot to the ass the universe has graciously bestowed upon me as motivation to clean house, I resent the general untidiness of the universe and it's inhabitants and lament my inability to self-motivate. As it turns out my life needs constant tending. Who knew.
WORK
Is a mess and a mess I've been unhappy with a long time, so long even I am tired of hearing myself talk about it. But it doesn't have to be a mess forever. I am optimistic I will figure out a good course of action for myself. Eventually. Hopefully sometime before the heat death of the universe.
SOCIAL LIFE
I have let my social life whither on the vine in the last year or so. So I am preparing a new socializing push to refresh existing friendships and forge new ones. This will likely involve getting out of the house. And maybe being on a schedule that leaves me free in the evenings when, I'm told, human types like to congregate and talk about consumer products and TV shows. But I look forward to it. I've got the chops, I just need to sharpen them up.
GENERAL EXISTENTIAL MALAISE
I think most people just call it depression, but I think I've been struggling with it for years. Coming out of the closet made everything, in many ways, better, and I am grateful for that. Although there are some of other core problem areas to sift through. I have a hard time finding my motivation to thrive for a variety of reasons I am still trying to understand and I'm very hard on myself for it. I never felt a part of my childhood church culture and now that I've left it I find I haven't found a place to land in the "secular world" where I feel I belong. I have not found my people or my place or my purpose (the all-important 3 p's) and I think it leaves me feeling generally untethered and listless and anxious. For some the answer is to just DO something which I understand, but I also understand myself and my tunnel vision obsessive tendencies so I'm loathe to just grasp on to something and go with it for fear I'll wake up 10 years down the line and wonder, "what the fuck am I doing?" If I can train myself to recognize "the wrong path" sooner rather than later maybe I'll be more comfortable of the idea of "just doing something."
ANXIETY
I am generally an anxious creature, which I am working on. This is something that developed later in life and I am not thrilled with it. Most days I have a general feeling that I need to be anxious about something, about who I am or what I'm doing or what I've done and I generally fill in that gap with some reason without really thinking about it. This is probably my strongest reason and motivation to exercise as I know from experience that helps a great deal. I've also set up a reading corner of my own with a turntable and a nice reading chair to provide myself with some "chill the fuck out" space. Sometimes the inner animal can't be reasoned with, it just has to be soothed.
CRIME & PUNISHMENT
I've been having tremendous difficulty the last few years letting myself move forward in any meaningful way, or even allowing myself the pleasure of consuming art that I would find very edifying. I pretty consciously know what I want to work on and I generally watch myself in amazement as I deny myself the privilege. There are some truly wonderful and imaginative TV shows for instance that I would love to start/finish but I generally choose to marathon trashier TV that I'm not that interested in instead. It's become pretty clear to me that some part of me desperately wishes to be punished, for being flawed or being gay/bi, or being something other than what other people want me to be. I carry the explicit and implicit judgements of other people FAR too readily and I really need to stop, but I find it really challenging even though I know pretty much what the issue is at this point. I would dearly love to stop carrying the real and imagined judgements of other people forever though. Note to self.
WRITING
There's really nothing standing in the way of me writing except my own foolish self. The above mentioned sense of deserving no good thing and maybe some more punishment and a REALLY bad case of smart kid syndrome are the big culprits here. It's clear to me that I need to write to be a happy person, not because it's going to make me rich and famous or well-liked but because I have thoughts I want to articulate and things I want to share and stories ideas that pop into my head non-stop that I would love to realize in some fashion. But the smart kid in me won't let me do it without being perfect at it the first time and the silly sadist in me wants to punish me for not being a smart kid. It's silly bullshit and I'm tired of it. I hope to get past it and finally write stories I'm happy with before the Big Crunch and the next Big Bang recreate the universe anew. The same goes for my stalled progress in learning piano and Japanese.
POLITICS
Man, fuck politics. The corruption and structural stagnation that has brought our government to a standstill and feeds and endless culture war seems insurmountable to me right now. I am sure it is NOT, but jesus. We desperately need to get our collective shit together. I find it all very depressing.
SCIENCE and WOO
I've been reading a lot more "WOO" material recently, including books on near-death experiences, evidence of life after death, UFO sightings, and so forth. Except Sasquatch which I find completely uninteresting. "A big primate lives in the woods!" Who cares. While I am myself a scientist and believe strongly that it's a good way of accumulating many types of knowledge, I don't really love the way people talk about it sometimes. I've been struggling to articulate it in ways that don't make me sound crazy. People seem to have a hard time distinguishing between beliefs that have some scientific evidence in support, and beliefs about science that reinforce their worldview. Science is good but it is not all that is true or necessary to consider. Reason is good but feelings exist and have their moments of primacy and importance. I largely read woo material because I've always been interested in what's outside the comfortable assumptions of the crowd and I like entertaining a reality bigger and more interesting than the current bullshit. So I like to read about other people's strange experiences and consider whether they might actually be true, or at the very least indicative of a grander, more interesting universe than the common wisdom currently assumes. Do I think they're all telling the truth? No. Do I think some of them might be a little delusional or unbalanced? Yes. Do I think that mean's it's all bunk? Not necessarily. Anecdotal data is not as good as scientific data, but it is evidence of something nonetheless, and even if it just turns out to be evidence of the many twists and turns of human psychology I find that in and of itself interesting. So I don't know how much of it is real, and to be truthful you don't either, we just have beliefs about "how the world must really be." But I'm happy to consider these other possibilities and not assume can't have experienced something I haven't experienced. I just don't recommend making any big life decisions or wasting too much time on unsupported anecdotes or just really incomplete information which is where I think people tend to go wrong either way. So no, I'm not falling off the deep end just yet, just looking into the water and wondering how deep it goes.
MORTALITY
I used to be terrified of dying with sins left unforgiven and burning in hell. Or dying before accomplishing God's purpose for me here on earth. Or dying before seeing the prequels Lucas was rumored to be working on like a decade before they came out, which was an extremely misplaced fear as it turns out. And then dying and having it be nothing. And then dying and having it be something worse. And then just the ending of fabulous, wonderful, conscious me (despite the fact that my consciousness disintegrates nightly). Now I'm just worried about dying before I get my shit together. Of dying before having said all the things I want to say and art left unmade and people left unloved. Of having wasted my time dithering on this anxious bullshit rather than using the time I have doing what I want to do. Which is a nicer fear of mortality really. But really the ultimate currency is time and I want to spend it better. Relatedly but not causally, I'm also thinking of volunteering in a hospice somewhere in town. It seems important to tackle death head-on both in oneself and in others and I can think of no better place to start.
SPIRITUALITY
I've been finding myself less hard on religion recently. For all the problems in most major world religions, they still seem to consciously address and attempt to answer important existential questions for more directly than the secular world which just seems to shrug at some of it, as if embarrassed to be associated with anything religion even talks about. I'm still trying to define for myself what spirituality is and why it's important to me, but it is. I will not likely be returning to christianity in this lifetime and will also avoid anything predicated on making you feel like shit for existing and offering themselves as the only absolution (because the mind fuck there, once you see it, is too obvious to ignore). I may try one of the westernized buddhism churches in town soon, just to see. I'm not sure I can even buy into buddhism that deeply, but I think spirituality has a value, and spiritual practices may be very useful in finding emotional and intellectual peace of some sort, even if there's nothing supernatural involved. I respect the search for meaning, I respect the search for peace, I don't think religion ruins everything and I don't think all religious believers are nuts or delusional and I'm trying to find a way to live with them more or less amiably without too much antagonism. To be sure, it seems like religious types could be meeting me half-way a bit more on that, but it's not an excuse to succumb to cynicism. Who knows, maybe I'll find something half-worth believing in, or at least practicing.
WHEREVER I GO, THERE I AM
It's weird to be days away from 39 and still be writing self-absorbed "what the fuck am I doing?" updates like this. This is really, really not how I imagined yours truly at age 39. I'm not quite sure what I expected, but I think I expected ... more grown-upedness? Confidence? Capability? Stability? Clarity? More and more I feel I can be that guy. Or perhaps am becoming that guy. I can feel him impatiently wiggling and straining against the current man-child artifice I've carelessly worn for years, wanting to take charge. Or at least have a say. My child-self is a nice kid, but maybe he shouldn't be running the show, you know? But I am still proud of myself sometimes. Yes, I'm a bit of a late-bloomer, but I came out of the closet, I moved to a better city, I left an abusive relationship and I'm asking myself a lot of the right questions. Questions I hope to answer before the universe forces the issue one way or another. Or ends in a fiery conflagration only those outside of time and space will be privileged to witness.
And that's the update this year. For those of you still reading, I thank you. For those of you who quit two paragraphs in, you're off the list! Not enough changes to talk about, a lot of omphaloskepsis, but there it is. Me in a nutshell. Cracking ever-so-gently.
James Haus
Age 39(ish)
Transmission ends
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Ceaselessly back into the past
I was born in the grand and meaningful year of 1976, so my nostalgia for 1972 is a curious thing, considering the cells that would eventually congeal and host my consciousness where still far too scattered to appreciate the times.
For the last few years my life has been more or less a series of dissociation practices, and the most recent is an unintentional convergence on the early 70s.
My TV watching dissociation has turned truly strange. I pick a show I don't care about all that much or really know much about and binge watch the entire series online until I've seen all of it. I settled on "The Bob Newhart Show" roughly around the same time I bought a turntable (after whatever brain parasites that live in Portland found their way to me) and bought a bunch of records from the early 70s, again, not consciously, including some lovely Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Organ Fugues, Simon and Garfunkel and Olivia Netwon- and Elton John and have been steadily working through my choices in the darkwood ikea corner I created for myself that, now that I think about it, reminds me very much of the darkwood motifs I spent my early years in.
The Bob Newhart Show ended much too soon and I've since moved on to WKRP in Cincinnati and Gatchaman, both airing in the early 70s, in Gatchaman's case an original run from 1972 to 1974, much like the Bob Newhart show.
I don't know why I'm marinating lightly in 1972 right now. All I know is it feels nice and I like it.
For the last few years my life has been more or less a series of dissociation practices, and the most recent is an unintentional convergence on the early 70s.
My TV watching dissociation has turned truly strange. I pick a show I don't care about all that much or really know much about and binge watch the entire series online until I've seen all of it. I settled on "The Bob Newhart Show" roughly around the same time I bought a turntable (after whatever brain parasites that live in Portland found their way to me) and bought a bunch of records from the early 70s, again, not consciously, including some lovely Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Organ Fugues, Simon and Garfunkel and Olivia Netwon- and Elton John and have been steadily working through my choices in the darkwood ikea corner I created for myself that, now that I think about it, reminds me very much of the darkwood motifs I spent my early years in.
The Bob Newhart Show ended much too soon and I've since moved on to WKRP in Cincinnati and Gatchaman, both airing in the early 70s, in Gatchaman's case an original run from 1972 to 1974, much like the Bob Newhart show.
I don't know why I'm marinating lightly in 1972 right now. All I know is it feels nice and I like it.
Monday, December 22, 2014
New/old review on Science and the Afterlife experience.
I have been, for some reason, dragging my feet on reading new books until I comment on the ones I've read most recently for reasons that are likely irrational. I'm working through my reviews of my paranormal mini-tour and discovered tonight to my delight that I had actually written a passable commentary on Science and the Afterlife Experience by Chris Carter shortly after I read it. I think I am settling on a new format for non-fiction reviews, but this will do for now in the interests of moving forward. I'm not entirely certain it's vital I give a New York Review of Books worthy discussion of a book on the paranormal on this blog that I'm pretty sure only I read anyway. I do want to write a bit about being interested in the paranormal in our age of science and religion but I guess that's coming after.
I think maybe, though, I didn't do an awesome job of covering the focus of the book which is carefully compiled reports of the most credible experiences across three broad groups: reincarnation, apparitions and mediumship. All three sections are incredibly interesting, and it's a good overview of the kind of experiences that people report as evidence for all three topics. Even the mediumship section, a field which has historically been filled with charlatans, introduced a new facet I had never heard of, which are the cross-correspondences, the supposed attempts of departed souls attempting to pass coded messages back through multiple mediums in order to establish some sort of confidence in their authenticity. You may or may not be convinced by that, but I thought the idea was clever and fun.
If you're at all interested in a fair assessment of experiential reports of the paranormal, you can't do much better than Chris Carter and Science and the Afterlife Experience.
I think maybe, though, I didn't do an awesome job of covering the focus of the book which is carefully compiled reports of the most credible experiences across three broad groups: reincarnation, apparitions and mediumship. All three sections are incredibly interesting, and it's a good overview of the kind of experiences that people report as evidence for all three topics. Even the mediumship section, a field which has historically been filled with charlatans, introduced a new facet I had never heard of, which are the cross-correspondences, the supposed attempts of departed souls attempting to pass coded messages back through multiple mediums in order to establish some sort of confidence in their authenticity. You may or may not be convinced by that, but I thought the idea was clever and fun.
If you're at all interested in a fair assessment of experiential reports of the paranormal, you can't do much better than Chris Carter and Science and the Afterlife Experience.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Celibate but Equal
I was reading a christian man's account of coming out over and over and how dear his community of gay, celibate Christians is and his struggle with it all in general today and it broke my heart a bit. On the one hand, who am I to say he can't have that strong conviction and make that choice and still be perfectly happy, you know?
On the other, I know that my view on being gay pre-gay-sex and post-gay-sex are night and day. Having sex with another man for the first time was the closest I've ever been to a spiritual moment since leaving the church. All my pre-conception about how wrong and guilty I would feel afterward melted away in a feeling of naturalness and completeness. For me it was a moment where the missing pieces all fit into place and I finally had a glimpse of what it meant to take comfort in physical intimacy of another human being. It was the opposite of awkward. It was the opposite of broken. It was a moment of genuine completeness, where I first understood the kind of completeness straight people had with each other, and that I could have that too. And, more importantly, that if a god embodying love existed, there was no way he would object to showing affection to another man that left me feeling so whole.
I guess if I could tenderly offer my advice to the well-meaning and celibate gay christian, it's to commit that particular "sin" at least once. Please don't spend your whole life segregating yourself behind sex-proofed glass because well-meaning straight christians are posing as experts on a topic they have very little actual experience with ,with only 3 questionably analyzed bible verses as their support.
Taste and see if it is good. I promise you, it is.
On the other, I know that my view on being gay pre-gay-sex and post-gay-sex are night and day. Having sex with another man for the first time was the closest I've ever been to a spiritual moment since leaving the church. All my pre-conception about how wrong and guilty I would feel afterward melted away in a feeling of naturalness and completeness. For me it was a moment where the missing pieces all fit into place and I finally had a glimpse of what it meant to take comfort in physical intimacy of another human being. It was the opposite of awkward. It was the opposite of broken. It was a moment of genuine completeness, where I first understood the kind of completeness straight people had with each other, and that I could have that too. And, more importantly, that if a god embodying love existed, there was no way he would object to showing affection to another man that left me feeling so whole.
I guess if I could tenderly offer my advice to the well-meaning and celibate gay christian, it's to commit that particular "sin" at least once. Please don't spend your whole life segregating yourself behind sex-proofed glass because well-meaning straight christians are posing as experts on a topic they have very little actual experience with ,with only 3 questionably analyzed bible verses as their support.
Taste and see if it is good. I promise you, it is.
Fringe-ology review
Having finally decided I'm just going to have to admit my writing is just plain not going to live up to my standards for now, I managed to arrange words into a review of Steve Volk's Fringe-ology, which I recommend highly to anyone who wants to dabble in fringe topics. There are other reasons I dragged my feet on this one, but I'll not go into them now.
Hopefully I can crank out a few more lackluster reviews over the next work or so about a couple more "fringey" books. And maybe pen an essay about why I'm interested in it and I should probably be less hesitant about admitting that. And then on to less fringey things.
Hopefully I can crank out a few more lackluster reviews over the next work or so about a couple more "fringey" books. And maybe pen an essay about why I'm interested in it and I should probably be less hesitant about admitting that. And then on to less fringey things.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Getting Goat (a short story based on real goat events)
Everything I have ever written and everything I will ever write is garbage compared to this headline. ht @ErrorJustin pic.twitter.com/kD9V0JnFpL
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) November 20, 2014
How I imagine this went down.
******
I'd been working the local beat for two weeks when I got the call from my editor.
"Goat on a roof. East side. Might be a good human interest story."
"I don't know how many humans are interested in goats, Bob."
Bob sighed melodramatically. "Just go check it out. It's a slow day anyway."
On scene were two uniformed cops, facing off with the goat at them from his perch on the roof, scampering angrily to the edge and back to bleat at them defiantly.
"Maybe we should mace the thing," said cop one.
"Really Johnson? You want to be known as the guy who maced a goat off a roof?" Cop two was arching his eyebrow at his partner.
"Nah man, I'm just tired of taking this goat's crap," Kowalksi whined, before dodging the stream of urine now gently arcing over the edge of the roof in their general direction. "Motherfucker!" he cried, scrabbling at his belt for something violent.
Cop two reached out and put his hand on Johnson's heaving outrage in a placating gesture. "Johnson, let's take a moment and see if we can't think of a response somewhere in between doing nothing and tasing a goat, shall we?"
I wandered over to the elderly lady watching the spectacle in her bathrobe from over the fence. "It's so sad to see it come to this." she said. Mrs. Katsch had been neighbors to the indignant goat and her owner for 5 years. "She was always such a good kidd." She said, her eyes brimming. "But she was never the same after the war."
"The war?" I asked incredulously. Although I was not surprised that the afternoon would choose to double down on weird.
"Oh yes, she and good old Colonel Hastings worked together in one of those gulf thingies." She said, waving in the general direction of war thingies in the Gulf of Somewhere Else. "They were part of an elite bomb-sniffing unit or some other crazy thing. Had some hard times don't you know." Mrs. Katsch leaned over the fence and whispered loudly but conspiratorially to me, "Word is, they killed a few people. Or saw a few people die. Or something just horrible like that. But they never talk about it. And after the war, they couldn't stay together for the memories, you know." Mrs. Katsch was tearing up again. "So Colonel Hastings gave her to good old Mr. Newton here, but he's never been able to keep up with the mood swings and the PTSD that poor little thing came back with after the war. That goat only respects one man." And then louder, to the officers still discussing the best way to get the goat off the roof that wouldn't go viral from dashboard cam footage, "That goat only respects one man!"
"And where is Mr. Newton now?" I asked, in what I thought was a very professional tone given the circumstances.
"Oh, he went off to get ... oh here he is now!" she said, waving at the old beat-up pick-up that had just pulled up, with what I presumed was Mr. Newton in the driver's seat.
"Oh thank goodness you're back!" shouted Mrs. Katsch, "the poor dear's just out of control!"
Newton nodded briefly, but not unkindly to Mrs. Katsch while on his way to unload his passenger, a slightly older gentleman with gray in the temple, a cane for walking and a slight limp. After extricating himself from Mr. Newton's assistance, Mr. Hastings set his gaze on the unfolding scene and marched over to the house.
The goat noticed him about half-way over and sat down and watched him with unreadable eyes.
By the time Mr. Hastings arrived at the edge of the lawn where the officers were standing, the scene had gone quiet, pregnant with expectation. He planted himself, looked up and said, "Hello Billy Jean."
The Goat bleated softly.
Mr. Hastings locked eyes with Billy Jean and then asked quietly, but sternly, "Do you want to tell me what's going on here, soldier?"
Billy got up and walked to the edge and bleated at the police. Looked over her shoulder at Mr. Hastings, and then walked back over to him, bleating plaintively.
"Billy Jean, I didn't ask for excuses, I asked what was going on here." Colonel Hastings was having none of it. "Why don't we ignore these fine gentlemen for now and you just come on down here. So we can talk."
Billy Jean looked down uncertainly and at Officer Johnson suspiciously. Billy bleated once.
"Yes, that was an order." said Mr. Hastings in reply.
Billy Jean trotted up the roof and disappeared over the other side. Whatever goat magic she worked to get back down remains unclear, but within moments she appeared around the other side and approached Mr. Hastings almost shyly before stopping just in front of him.
Slowly, awkwardly, Mr. Hasting's knelt, bad leg and all, and put his face close to Billy Jean and talked quietly to her for several minutes, his gaze never leaving her eyes and his hand gently turning her head back to him when she looked away. It ended, to my surprise, with a gentle kiss to her furry nose.
He stood up, and looked directly at Mr. Newton. "Next time Sam, call me before it gets this bad." He walked stiffly back to the car.
"Absolutely Colonel Hastings," said Newton, hurrying around to open the door for a man he clearly admired and maybe feared the tiniest bit.
Colonel Hastings looked back once at Billy Jean and nodded, his face a mask of professionalism, his eyes watering, before Mr. Newton sped him away. Whatever history had made this moment of shared peace possible also making it impossible to stay.
The officers were leaving, Cop Two laughing at Officer Johnson's blustering excuses. Mrs. Katsch walked back inside, "Such a good man," she said.
Billy Jean watched the truck drive away until it was long out of sight. And then looked up at the stars starting to poke through the evening twilight, chewing grass quietly. Momentarily sheltered from the storms of the past by the kind words and steady friendship of the only man she would ever trust.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
I used to read
When I was in 1st grade, I got a trophy for reading 205 books. When I was in second grade my mom and I would go to the Phoenix Public Library and check out 75 books at a time, 25 on my card, 25 on my mom's card and 25 on my dad's card, and I would read them all as quickly as I could, transferring books from the "to-read" stack to the "read" stack on the floor of our mobile home until there were no more books in the "to-read" stack. And then we would go back and get 75 more. I got a trophy for reading 1005 books that year.
By 3rd grade I had a new teacher who measured reading with a more sophisticated "pages read" system. Continuing our weekly library visits, I read 8,000 pages in 3rd grade, and 11,000 pages in 4th grade.
My 5th grade literacy markers are lost to me as I mostly remember a few other things from the 5th grade. Mr. M was a good teacher and I borked his best compass with a magnet and never owned up to it. This was the peak of my on-again, off-again childhood romance with Angel B. We would "french" after school. My laugh has evolved over the course of my life, and that year it took the form of opening my mouth wide, emitting no sound, and heaving my sides in silent laughter. I once got kicked out of class for laughing enthusiastically but completely silently. Me and my friend Chris B. dominated the soccer league that year. This was the peak of Diana M's crush on me, during which she kicked me in the balls repeatedly during the soccer tournament. She seemed regretful. And then there was the trip to the superstition mountains where Mr. M. held a rattlesnake at bay on a desert hiking trail while the rest of us scooted around it, the braver among us sneaking a peak at the snake. I was not among the braver of us.
By 6th grade, I had been uprooted and dragged to Idaho, and most everyone hated me that first year because my dad was the principle. He was strict and the previous teacher had basically let a nascent Lord of the Flies scenario bloom and they all hated him for not letting them have the run of the place and me by proxy. One lunchtime early on, K, who is now one of my best lifelong friends, crawled over to me on his hands and knees, laughing too hard to speak or stand, and said, "H, H says to zip up your pants before we all puke." That was how that year went. It was also the year I met the first of many Matts, who introduced me to Douglas Adams. So much of that year was spent on the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and Robotech, which I had been introduced to by K, which are among the first of my pulpy SF loves.
My reading list more or less remained the same through 7th and 8th grade, discreetly picking up pulpy SF, or Tarzan or Black Beauty, or Wizard of Oz books from the tiny one-room library in Eagle, ID and devouring them as quick as possible. I would sometimes read a novel a night at this point.
In High School, I found old SF short stories. I'm not sure who I discovered first, Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke, but I devoured their short stories, and then novels. The collected short stories of each, the Rama series and the Foundation series remain some of my favorite stories to this day. I read less Ray Bradbury then, but wish I had read more. And I neglected other classics, which I wish I had not. I still have not finished Moby Dick. The chapter that's purely an encyclopedia entry on the different kinds of whales just tanked me. It never occurred to me I could skip it. This was also my introduction to Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time series, which was not finished before his untimely death and which I still have not made time to finish myself.
In college I got back into kids books, partly influenced by the women I wanted to get with who were in to YA literature. But I developed and still retain a deep appreciation for A.A. Milne and the two Winnie the Pooh books. The chapter where Christopher Robin tells Pooh he has to leave the forest and grow up still gets me. I was introduced to more fantasy authors during this period, like Terry Goodkind, and the Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, which remains one of my favorite blends of fantasy and SF to date.
It was college where I began to dumb obscene amounts of money into collecting the comic books I'd been deprived of for a while and also where my gaming habit began in earnest. I had been reading comics and playing games throughout my childhood, but it was college where the balance of time shifted from reading novels to reading comics and playing video games. From there the latter two activities slowly eroded my reading time over the next decade or so. At which point social media and glow screen swiping started eating into my comic book reading.
Today, I have one and a half huge shelves devoted to my "to-read" list, which are overflowing. There are at least 50 books there that I have not read yet, or want to read again before I get rid of them. Among those languishing unread are four books my thoughtful boyfriend got me as presents, and 2 or 3 novels published by a friend. My comics go unread, although I would like to read some more of Marvel's Thor. Although I remain satisfied with the great purge that reduced my comics collection from 17 long boxes to a more reasonable 4.
I play a lot of video games still. I think it's the thing I've been doing the most since I came out of the closet. What drives me to play is a persistent desire to dissociate/procrastinate since coming out (that shit was hard, y'all, although maybe not an eternal excuse) and some kind of mild OCD that enjoys simple worlds with simple puzzle solving and simulated achievement which my brain mistakes for actual achievement. All that adds up to a state where I receive video game tasks like the Labors of Hercules. "Kill one thousand orcs? Yes, I will restore my honor."
Most of my reading from day to day comes form my twitter feed, and the occasional great article that gets linked there. At night I browse the paranormal/woo side of reddit half asleep, hoping to find something imaginative there. My favorite to date is the random poster who laid out a system of higher powers that theorized that Jehovah was but one of a pantheon of gods and he was just the Law and Order aspect.
Which is not to disparage video games or social media, at least not right now. This is just to say my habits have changed.
And good lord do I miss the reader I used to be.
By 3rd grade I had a new teacher who measured reading with a more sophisticated "pages read" system. Continuing our weekly library visits, I read 8,000 pages in 3rd grade, and 11,000 pages in 4th grade.
My 5th grade literacy markers are lost to me as I mostly remember a few other things from the 5th grade. Mr. M was a good teacher and I borked his best compass with a magnet and never owned up to it. This was the peak of my on-again, off-again childhood romance with Angel B. We would "french" after school. My laugh has evolved over the course of my life, and that year it took the form of opening my mouth wide, emitting no sound, and heaving my sides in silent laughter. I once got kicked out of class for laughing enthusiastically but completely silently. Me and my friend Chris B. dominated the soccer league that year. This was the peak of Diana M's crush on me, during which she kicked me in the balls repeatedly during the soccer tournament. She seemed regretful. And then there was the trip to the superstition mountains where Mr. M. held a rattlesnake at bay on a desert hiking trail while the rest of us scooted around it, the braver among us sneaking a peak at the snake. I was not among the braver of us.
By 6th grade, I had been uprooted and dragged to Idaho, and most everyone hated me that first year because my dad was the principle. He was strict and the previous teacher had basically let a nascent Lord of the Flies scenario bloom and they all hated him for not letting them have the run of the place and me by proxy. One lunchtime early on, K, who is now one of my best lifelong friends, crawled over to me on his hands and knees, laughing too hard to speak or stand, and said, "H, H says to zip up your pants before we all puke." That was how that year went. It was also the year I met the first of many Matts, who introduced me to Douglas Adams. So much of that year was spent on the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and Robotech, which I had been introduced to by K, which are among the first of my pulpy SF loves.
My reading list more or less remained the same through 7th and 8th grade, discreetly picking up pulpy SF, or Tarzan or Black Beauty, or Wizard of Oz books from the tiny one-room library in Eagle, ID and devouring them as quick as possible. I would sometimes read a novel a night at this point.
In High School, I found old SF short stories. I'm not sure who I discovered first, Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke, but I devoured their short stories, and then novels. The collected short stories of each, the Rama series and the Foundation series remain some of my favorite stories to this day. I read less Ray Bradbury then, but wish I had read more. And I neglected other classics, which I wish I had not. I still have not finished Moby Dick. The chapter that's purely an encyclopedia entry on the different kinds of whales just tanked me. It never occurred to me I could skip it. This was also my introduction to Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time series, which was not finished before his untimely death and which I still have not made time to finish myself.
In college I got back into kids books, partly influenced by the women I wanted to get with who were in to YA literature. But I developed and still retain a deep appreciation for A.A. Milne and the two Winnie the Pooh books. The chapter where Christopher Robin tells Pooh he has to leave the forest and grow up still gets me. I was introduced to more fantasy authors during this period, like Terry Goodkind, and the Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, which remains one of my favorite blends of fantasy and SF to date.
It was college where I began to dumb obscene amounts of money into collecting the comic books I'd been deprived of for a while and also where my gaming habit began in earnest. I had been reading comics and playing games throughout my childhood, but it was college where the balance of time shifted from reading novels to reading comics and playing video games. From there the latter two activities slowly eroded my reading time over the next decade or so. At which point social media and glow screen swiping started eating into my comic book reading.
Today, I have one and a half huge shelves devoted to my "to-read" list, which are overflowing. There are at least 50 books there that I have not read yet, or want to read again before I get rid of them. Among those languishing unread are four books my thoughtful boyfriend got me as presents, and 2 or 3 novels published by a friend. My comics go unread, although I would like to read some more of Marvel's Thor. Although I remain satisfied with the great purge that reduced my comics collection from 17 long boxes to a more reasonable 4.
I play a lot of video games still. I think it's the thing I've been doing the most since I came out of the closet. What drives me to play is a persistent desire to dissociate/procrastinate since coming out (that shit was hard, y'all, although maybe not an eternal excuse) and some kind of mild OCD that enjoys simple worlds with simple puzzle solving and simulated achievement which my brain mistakes for actual achievement. All that adds up to a state where I receive video game tasks like the Labors of Hercules. "Kill one thousand orcs? Yes, I will restore my honor."
Most of my reading from day to day comes form my twitter feed, and the occasional great article that gets linked there. At night I browse the paranormal/woo side of reddit half asleep, hoping to find something imaginative there. My favorite to date is the random poster who laid out a system of higher powers that theorized that Jehovah was but one of a pantheon of gods and he was just the Law and Order aspect.
Which is not to disparage video games or social media, at least not right now. This is just to say my habits have changed.
And good lord do I miss the reader I used to be.
Monday, November 03, 2014
In Which I am a Tremendous Asshole
I am sure it will surprise you to learn I have said things I regret on the internet and twitter specifically. If there's a medium better designed for hostile, half-thought chirping at everyone I am not aware of it. Here's an example. Earlier this year I got mad at a famous-ish author/twitterer for how he handled a spoiler that I did not actually care about on his twitter feed. And then I got mad at his author friend for implying right-thinking people prefer spoilers. And then self-righteously unloaded on a 3rd author friend (editor?) for implying I was a child for not liking spoilers by mimicking me with the internet version of a baby voice. Do I still kinda think that last guy was a dick about things? Yeah. Do I wish famous-ish people would not believe their own press releases? Yeah. Am I proud of how I handled myself. Not so much. The worst part of this being that another twitter personality I follow turns out to have written a book on C. S. Lewis I quite liked. And follows those people. And may have seen that exchange. I find it mortifying that he might have seen that particular exchange and how I handled my end of things. He is someone I would potentially like to talk with, but if he saw that would he think the same of me?
More recently, upon the advent of another Apple product, and the requisite hosannas and hallelujahs and golden trumpets that attend such an event, I went on a rant about hype and how much I hates it. I do. I hate hype and hype culture. It's like being in love with the promises of those snake oil salesmen who used to get run out of town on a rail for bilking the gullible out of money with lies. Because it'll be totally different this time. But it is probably unkind and unwise and hypocritical of me to berate others for the "crime" of anticipating a new thing, especially if I'm not going to put out a better argument for why we should collectively ignore the hype machine other than "I hates it." I believe there is an argument to be made there, but I have not yet made it. So, my apologies to all my friends and not-friends and extended twitter family for that rant. I regrets it.
Please, do not put away your rotten tomatoes yet, there is more. Speaking of hypocrisy ....
The universe, in it's infinite, if potentially non-personal, wisdom strives to keep me humble. Shortly after that hype rant my old 4s iphone broke. After briefly debating whether to downgrade or go android or whatever, I decided just to get another iphone, the iphone 6. Because everything I own is apple, because they all talk nicely to each other without much fiddling, because I had been eligible for an upgrade for over a year, because, because, because I'm a hypocrite. A little bit. Or a lot a bit. In any case, my rant was ringing in my mind as I hit the "buy" button.
At this time, I would encourage you to send your rotten tomatoes to British Airways, who will route them to me in good time.
The truth about most of my rants is that the real target is me, and how I am responding or not responding to the environment in which I find myself. The rest of you are all but casualties in my ongoing conflict with myself and my choices. Yes, hype sucks. Yes, Apple hype sucks. Yes, I own their products anyway. I just want to use them though, not worship them like tiny mechanical gods. I have a vision of adulthood that entails picking up a tool when you need it, and putting it down and forgetting about it when you don't. I am still trying to articulate and live up to that vision. And, I don't know if you've noticed, but advertising and consumerism has kind of lost touch with reality in terms of fantastical claims and cult followings. So I believe in any case. But it doesn't excuse me from yelling at everyone else for my discomfort with the beliefs and practices of modern consumer culture and my decisions, hypocritical and not, within it.
So, sorry for yelling at everyone about hype. Sorry for being a hypocrite. When I have an argument to make about it, I'll try to do it here with something resembling coherent logic rather than just chirping at you all on twitter.
More recently, upon the advent of another Apple product, and the requisite hosannas and hallelujahs and golden trumpets that attend such an event, I went on a rant about hype and how much I hates it. I do. I hate hype and hype culture. It's like being in love with the promises of those snake oil salesmen who used to get run out of town on a rail for bilking the gullible out of money with lies. Because it'll be totally different this time. But it is probably unkind and unwise and hypocritical of me to berate others for the "crime" of anticipating a new thing, especially if I'm not going to put out a better argument for why we should collectively ignore the hype machine other than "I hates it." I believe there is an argument to be made there, but I have not yet made it. So, my apologies to all my friends and not-friends and extended twitter family for that rant. I regrets it.
Please, do not put away your rotten tomatoes yet, there is more. Speaking of hypocrisy ....
The universe, in it's infinite, if potentially non-personal, wisdom strives to keep me humble. Shortly after that hype rant my old 4s iphone broke. After briefly debating whether to downgrade or go android or whatever, I decided just to get another iphone, the iphone 6. Because everything I own is apple, because they all talk nicely to each other without much fiddling, because I had been eligible for an upgrade for over a year, because, because, because I'm a hypocrite. A little bit. Or a lot a bit. In any case, my rant was ringing in my mind as I hit the "buy" button.
At this time, I would encourage you to send your rotten tomatoes to British Airways, who will route them to me in good time.
The truth about most of my rants is that the real target is me, and how I am responding or not responding to the environment in which I find myself. The rest of you are all but casualties in my ongoing conflict with myself and my choices. Yes, hype sucks. Yes, Apple hype sucks. Yes, I own their products anyway. I just want to use them though, not worship them like tiny mechanical gods. I have a vision of adulthood that entails picking up a tool when you need it, and putting it down and forgetting about it when you don't. I am still trying to articulate and live up to that vision. And, I don't know if you've noticed, but advertising and consumerism has kind of lost touch with reality in terms of fantastical claims and cult followings. So I believe in any case. But it doesn't excuse me from yelling at everyone else for my discomfort with the beliefs and practices of modern consumer culture and my decisions, hypocritical and not, within it.
So, sorry for yelling at everyone about hype. Sorry for being a hypocrite. When I have an argument to make about it, I'll try to do it here with something resembling coherent logic rather than just chirping at you all on twitter.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
The Tyranny of Self-Control
Oy, I bet he's gonna get a lot of letters on this one. Andrew Sullivan weighs in again on the GamerGate fiasco and Anita Sarkesian in particular. (My apologies if this is too big of a chunk to quote, but I'm not sure how to cut it down any and still retain context for what I want to talk about.)
With that in mind, I take his point that we don't want to do the same thing for men who are, to some degree, driven by testosterone. Having said that, I worry that he takes it too far back the other way, or at the very least that he and Anita are talking past each other a little bit. I agree it's wrong to demonize men for simply having the urges, the impulses, the dark thoughts. In as much as any feminist is saying that, I agree that's wrong. The unbidden impulse is intrinsically human and not under rational control. Of course, what IS under rational control is what one does with the impulse, how one channels the emotion, how one actually behaves in public.
I think we need to find some happy middle ground between the extremely true "Restricting the natural and harmless romantic expression of LGBT individuals causes needless suffering" and "If you don't give boys hand jobs when they ask they can get really, really sick." I'm not saying Andrew is making the later argument, but it leans too far to that side for my comfort. I mean, that latter argument is a caricature, but it IS a thing that young men actually say and it is one of the end products of a culture that worries endlessly if boys are unregulated boys enough. It's laughable because as grown-ass adults we understand the boy will not actually get "sick" if he doesn't get off right now, and even in the case of blue balls, is something he can give himself a hand with. So the question here is, where are we drawing the line between men being allowed to be fully testosteroned humans and reasonable self-control?
I agree that shaming the impulses is wrong, boys can't help that. They frequently can't even help getting an erection, especially when younger. This does not mean that men are helpless though. This does not mean that the spontaneous boner has to be endlessly celebrated or catered to. That each moment of testosterone rage must be fully expressed. Especially when other people tell them, "that behavior makes me really uncomfortable." I think this is what Andrew is getting at when he acknowledges men must be taught to deal with these impulses and emotions appropriately. I think the contradiction comes in when he seems to want to also retain the right to celebrate the unconstrained male. I'm not sure you can do both, is the thing. If you tell a boy he "You have to control yourself *wink*" are you not just telling him he doesn't have to control himself? Or that controlling one's self is really only for show around the womenfolk and lesser males? You can't simultaneously be teaching respect for the personhood and humanity of women and girls and then be cooing in adoration when he gets in a fight or harasses a girl his penis really wants to have sex with. I mean, this is the central contradiction in the "what we say vs what we do" in "male spaces" that feminists like Sarkeesian are actually protesting. "Baby I believe in your full humanity and dignity but it's really important I objectify a woman a little each day to honor my testosterone."
Is testosterone destiny though? As a testosterone having male I can confirm it is indeed a hell of a drug. Likewise I can confirm it a wholly tamable force given some practice, patience and, you know, social pressure to do so. Ideally this is what we should be teaching teenage boys is it not? "Yeah, that impulse resulting from erection/anger? That's not destiny."
I'm just not sure how Andrew thinks we need to celebrate maleness and male impulses MORE in this culture. As far as I can tell we're now, even at the peak of perceived feminist oppression, still soaked in a culture that encourages men to go with the impulse as much as possible. You want to look at some boobs? Look at some boobs. You want to compliment that lady on the street? Call out to her in joyful male song. You want to fight about it? Get on the internet and fight about it. You want gladiator sports? We have multiple channels and 24-hour a day coverage.
I just don't buy this fear that maleness is in any way in danger of not being celebrated or dominant. And even so, if all that's being asked is to share public spaces, comb hair and behave appropriate, EVEN WHEN HORNY, I kinda think guys are gonna live through that experience. Even further, I think that men being asked to consider the effects of their behavior, to consider not indulging in their impulses quite so much, to THINK OF OTHER GODDAMN PEOPLE rather than their own immediate needs is not so much tyranny as just asking guys to grow up. Just a bit. A man's inner child doesn't need to die, just maybe we could ask that he not drive.
Underlying this belief in the importance of changing other people’s subculture is an argument. For Sarkeesian, it seems that all differences between men and women, or between masculine or feminine identities, are entirely a function of culture, and can only be understood within a paradigm of patriarchy. All I can say is that I disagree. Of course culture matters a lot – but it doesn’t go all the way down. To deny the power of testosterone, or the stark difference it makes in all species on planet earth, can therefore lead you to misread what can and cannot be changed. My view is that there are certain aspects of testosterone that will always make men and male culture different: it’s gonna be inherently more aggressive, more physical, and more sexual in an objectifying way, and more promiscuous. The task of a mature society is not to abolish this difference (which is impossible), but to harness it to more constructive ends.
And so , in advanced Western cultures, we divert male physical aggression and in-group loyalty away from militias and gang warfare toward the spectacle of the NFL or professional wrestling or recreational hunting; we create a culture of sports that can channel a lot of what men want to do in peaceful and socially integrative ways; we allow safe spaces for this kind of culture to exist – and that includes things like violent video games and objectifying porn. And we attempt to offer a model of masculinity that can coopt the pride and ego of a testosteroned will to power into something more gentle. We praise good fathers and diligent husbands.
What a mature society does not seek to do is expunge human nature itself. All such projects backfire, or result in new forms of oppression. And there is a tendency – certainly in Sarkeesian’s work – to problematize maleness itself, to seek to expunge it, to remove all differences between the sexes for the sake of justice and fairness. Her defense will be that she is not attacking men as such – just a “toxic culture of masculinity.” And yet her prose often slips into generalizations that would never be tolerated if used against another group; and it’s hard to see what characteristics of maleness she believes are innate or at least unchangeable.
What worries me in this new era of “checking your privilege” is that men may be punished merely for being men. When liberals actually defend the conviction of the innocent in a murky world of “affirmative consent” pour décourager les autres, you see exactly where this can lead. And my concern is not just that it will not work, but that it may well provoke a backlash that compounds the problem. And that backlash, in turn, will only encourage well-intentioned people to double down on the project.
My initial reaction to this was a little exasperation, but as a novelty, decided to maybe try and see where he's coming from. I think maybe the defensiveness here is tied up in how conservative christians used to talk about homosexuality? As a gay man who stayed in the closet for a loooong time, because of "your impulses should not lead you to sin." talk, I get that might not be a world he wants to go back to. One where self-righteous moralizers define what is "correct behavior" and dictate strict adherence to that code regardless of human nature and differences in that nature. So, for a gay man, not being able to ever express affection for another gay man is a loss of both identity and the chance to be fully human in the way that we naturally are. And it's wrong for someone else to dictate otherwise, especially given the shaky ground critics of gay affection and commitment are standing on (there's a reason anti-gay marriage laws have not held up to judicial scrutiny). The main sticking point being, we aren't actually hurting anyone else by being affectionate with one another. And inasmuch as no one in this society is compelled to live by a particular reading of biblical law, and no christian has ever been promised or should expect to never see people who have different preferences and standards operating in public spaces and certainly has not been given permission to be cruel to people who are, quite shockingly, not the same as them just walking around in public like they own the place, people are quite rightly coming to the conclusion that maybe it's okay if consenting adults love each other and show a tiny fraction of that affection in public and not get killed, ostracized or penalized for it.
With that in mind, I take his point that we don't want to do the same thing for men who are, to some degree, driven by testosterone. Having said that, I worry that he takes it too far back the other way, or at the very least that he and Anita are talking past each other a little bit. I agree it's wrong to demonize men for simply having the urges, the impulses, the dark thoughts. In as much as any feminist is saying that, I agree that's wrong. The unbidden impulse is intrinsically human and not under rational control. Of course, what IS under rational control is what one does with the impulse, how one channels the emotion, how one actually behaves in public.
I think we need to find some happy middle ground between the extremely true "Restricting the natural and harmless romantic expression of LGBT individuals causes needless suffering" and "If you don't give boys hand jobs when they ask they can get really, really sick." I'm not saying Andrew is making the later argument, but it leans too far to that side for my comfort. I mean, that latter argument is a caricature, but it IS a thing that young men actually say and it is one of the end products of a culture that worries endlessly if boys are unregulated boys enough. It's laughable because as grown-ass adults we understand the boy will not actually get "sick" if he doesn't get off right now, and even in the case of blue balls, is something he can give himself a hand with. So the question here is, where are we drawing the line between men being allowed to be fully testosteroned humans and reasonable self-control?
I agree that shaming the impulses is wrong, boys can't help that. They frequently can't even help getting an erection, especially when younger. This does not mean that men are helpless though. This does not mean that the spontaneous boner has to be endlessly celebrated or catered to. That each moment of testosterone rage must be fully expressed. Especially when other people tell them, "that behavior makes me really uncomfortable." I think this is what Andrew is getting at when he acknowledges men must be taught to deal with these impulses and emotions appropriately. I think the contradiction comes in when he seems to want to also retain the right to celebrate the unconstrained male. I'm not sure you can do both, is the thing. If you tell a boy he "You have to control yourself *wink*" are you not just telling him he doesn't have to control himself? Or that controlling one's self is really only for show around the womenfolk and lesser males? You can't simultaneously be teaching respect for the personhood and humanity of women and girls and then be cooing in adoration when he gets in a fight or harasses a girl his penis really wants to have sex with. I mean, this is the central contradiction in the "what we say vs what we do" in "male spaces" that feminists like Sarkeesian are actually protesting. "Baby I believe in your full humanity and dignity but it's really important I objectify a woman a little each day to honor my testosterone."
Is testosterone destiny though? As a testosterone having male I can confirm it is indeed a hell of a drug. Likewise I can confirm it a wholly tamable force given some practice, patience and, you know, social pressure to do so. Ideally this is what we should be teaching teenage boys is it not? "Yeah, that impulse resulting from erection/anger? That's not destiny."
I'm just not sure how Andrew thinks we need to celebrate maleness and male impulses MORE in this culture. As far as I can tell we're now, even at the peak of perceived feminist oppression, still soaked in a culture that encourages men to go with the impulse as much as possible. You want to look at some boobs? Look at some boobs. You want to compliment that lady on the street? Call out to her in joyful male song. You want to fight about it? Get on the internet and fight about it. You want gladiator sports? We have multiple channels and 24-hour a day coverage.
I just don't buy this fear that maleness is in any way in danger of not being celebrated or dominant. And even so, if all that's being asked is to share public spaces, comb hair and behave appropriate, EVEN WHEN HORNY, I kinda think guys are gonna live through that experience. Even further, I think that men being asked to consider the effects of their behavior, to consider not indulging in their impulses quite so much, to THINK OF OTHER GODDAMN PEOPLE rather than their own immediate needs is not so much tyranny as just asking guys to grow up. Just a bit. A man's inner child doesn't need to die, just maybe we could ask that he not drive.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Status Report
I am trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing. My writing is scattered, as are my thoughts to some degree.
There's no going back to being closeted and probably no going back to being christian. I say probably because there are bits and pieces of christian culture, belief and practice I have realized I want to take with me. None of it particularly dependent on christianity per se, but things that exist in the secular world, but are not dealt with forthrightly because of their close association with christianity. The details of that are probably best left for another time, as I am still working out how to talk about it myself. But there is a baby in that bathwater (a metaphor I am desperate to replace), and I don't think it's wise to throw it out. And I want to intelligently strain out the ideas I want, but I am not exactly practiced in rigorous philosophical thought.
The more I marinate in the secular world the longer I realize it contains many of the same problems as the christian one. Problems of pride verging on hubris, an obscene level of unearned self-regard for one's intelligence and uprightness, an odd confidence in the shape and character of those elements of the universe still hidden by shadow and fog, an easy demonization of the other, a subtle addiction to in-grouping, inquisitions and purity crusades, a love of false dichotomies, sexism, patriarchy and blind hero worship; all these are just as present in the world outside the church as in it. On a bad day I think of it as the blind hating the blind. On a better day I just laugh at the absurdity of people who have so much in common pretending that they are from different worlds. We fight because we're the same, so much the same.
The golden line I followed out of the closet has disappeared and I am once again searching for it. But I have not found a new purpose yet and while I have gathered a few kindred spirits I'm not sure I have found "my people" yet. A group I can cleanly point to and declare affinity and resonance of spirit and commonality of purpose. Or maybe I have and I am too deeply engaged in my omphaloskepsis to see how much the same I am too.
And I vent about the complete lack of humility in America in the year of our lord 2014, but I am not overflowing with the stuff myself it seems. Still too eager to tell everyone else what they're doing wrong on any given day if my twitter feed is any indication. And while my frustration with the hypocrisy and unkindness and general shittyness of the culture at large has not really abated, it seems more and more ridiculous to complain about it endlessly while never changing myself.
I still entertain too many delusions of grandeur and not enough disciplines of habit. A sense of purpose is a powerful thing. But I have been swept up in so many purposes that were not my own I am hesitant to jump in again, for fear of being carried farther away in the wrong direction, whatever that is. So I have not been getting an E for Effort. More like a G for Getting by.
Even so, I have an inner world I want to act on in some fashion. Ideas, stories, music I want to express. Career options I want to explore. Resonances to sound out. Existential anxieties I want to resolve, or at least enter a good working relationship with. I'd like to die knowing I gave it a good shot, and passed on some good ideas.
Currently having troubles with the world to self interface though apparently. Please stand by.
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Max: Chasing the Light Fantastic
I first met Max when he was a wee pup. One of two survivors of hard birth, along with his sister Dana, Max went from sickly to robust puppy health faster than expected and settled into life on the 3-dog dachshund farm my parents ran pretty quickly. He eventually fathered the fourth and last of the pack in Misha, who was a frequent companion on his adventures.
Max loved his family, walks around the block and chasing laser lights and shadows beyond all good sense. I have never met a dog as obsessed with light and shadow as Max was and we all loved him for it. We would worry, of course, when he showed no signs of quitting no matter how long the laser light stayed out and when he would sit for hours on the couch, starting at the floor, hoping a shadow or a laser light would appear so he could chase it. He was prone to wrapping himself in the blankets provided around the house and then poking his nose out when he suspected the outside world might merit his attention. He was companionable, if not overly affectionate, which I always have respect for in an animal, human or otherwise. My favorite memory of him is the time he ran into the house during a dinner party, jumped up on someone's lap and got so excited he immediately stared peeing on one of my mom's friends. I still vividly remember the image of my father holding a still-peeing max at arm's length so he could take him back outside. That was a good dinner party.
Max had over a decade of good living before he lost his father earlier this year to old-age, which in this case was a degenerative neurological disease of some sort that eventually robbed him of the use of his back legs. Sadly, Max did not survive his father for much longer. Max had been fussing quite a bit over his kennel in the last few months, and was prone to wandering a bit aimlessly late at night for whatever reason. Chasing ghosts, or shadows or simply puttering around.
My brother was always closest to Max, and spent much more time with him than I ever did, which is why I'm glad he was there on Max's last day. He got home early, and noticed Max was having trouble even supporting his weight on his front legs to use the yard. And unable to walk in a straight line or move about. He would stop and whine because his legs weren't working well enough to get him anywhere. So my brother picked him up and held him for a couple hours until my parents got home and could go to the vet with him.
This was Max's second visit to the vet that week. On the previous visit the vet had seen his back was in pain, but wanted to give him medicine before making any big decisions. That night, the vet agreed his condition had deteriorated badly and unless we had several thousand dollars to spend on expensive diagnosis/surgery/treatment (we do not), it was best to put him to sleep.
That night my brother held Max and he and my mother gave him affection until it was time and then continued to hold him until he went still. It's a short life, but Max fought for it from the beginning and went out with all the love and affection a dog could hope for.
I'm grateful to my brother for being there for him and I'm grateful to have known such an compellingly neurotic dog.
Rest in peace Max.
Max loved his family, walks around the block and chasing laser lights and shadows beyond all good sense. I have never met a dog as obsessed with light and shadow as Max was and we all loved him for it. We would worry, of course, when he showed no signs of quitting no matter how long the laser light stayed out and when he would sit for hours on the couch, starting at the floor, hoping a shadow or a laser light would appear so he could chase it. He was prone to wrapping himself in the blankets provided around the house and then poking his nose out when he suspected the outside world might merit his attention. He was companionable, if not overly affectionate, which I always have respect for in an animal, human or otherwise. My favorite memory of him is the time he ran into the house during a dinner party, jumped up on someone's lap and got so excited he immediately stared peeing on one of my mom's friends. I still vividly remember the image of my father holding a still-peeing max at arm's length so he could take him back outside. That was a good dinner party.
Max had over a decade of good living before he lost his father earlier this year to old-age, which in this case was a degenerative neurological disease of some sort that eventually robbed him of the use of his back legs. Sadly, Max did not survive his father for much longer. Max had been fussing quite a bit over his kennel in the last few months, and was prone to wandering a bit aimlessly late at night for whatever reason. Chasing ghosts, or shadows or simply puttering around.
My brother was always closest to Max, and spent much more time with him than I ever did, which is why I'm glad he was there on Max's last day. He got home early, and noticed Max was having trouble even supporting his weight on his front legs to use the yard. And unable to walk in a straight line or move about. He would stop and whine because his legs weren't working well enough to get him anywhere. So my brother picked him up and held him for a couple hours until my parents got home and could go to the vet with him.
This was Max's second visit to the vet that week. On the previous visit the vet had seen his back was in pain, but wanted to give him medicine before making any big decisions. That night, the vet agreed his condition had deteriorated badly and unless we had several thousand dollars to spend on expensive diagnosis/surgery/treatment (we do not), it was best to put him to sleep.
That night my brother held Max and he and my mother gave him affection until it was time and then continued to hold him until he went still. It's a short life, but Max fought for it from the beginning and went out with all the love and affection a dog could hope for.
I'm grateful to my brother for being there for him and I'm grateful to have known such an compellingly neurotic dog.
Rest in peace Max.
Friday, October 03, 2014
This Week's Questions
Questions that occurred to me this week with no obvious answer:
Is the Christian ideal of service really just social control?
In other words, "is serve your neighbor and especially me" something the higher ups say to keep people in line, while feeling no particular pressure to serve in return? Or, worse, to believe that they "serve" by being fabulously wealthy and successful and that the benefits trickle down?
Or is a society where everybody servers everybody an ideal to strive for even outside of a christian framework?
How many problems stem from the personhood of corporations?
Do people that accept that corporations are people have any room to laugh at the religious for believing in irrational traditions?
Why does our economic theory so closely align with that of dragons?
(Acquire gold, hoard gold, praise and worship gold hoarders, hope one day to be a dragon)
Is the Christian ideal of service really just social control?
In other words, "is serve your neighbor and especially me" something the higher ups say to keep people in line, while feeling no particular pressure to serve in return? Or, worse, to believe that they "serve" by being fabulously wealthy and successful and that the benefits trickle down?
Or is a society where everybody servers everybody an ideal to strive for even outside of a christian framework?
How many problems stem from the personhood of corporations?
Do people that accept that corporations are people have any room to laugh at the religious for believing in irrational traditions?
Why does our economic theory so closely align with that of dragons?
(Acquire gold, hoard gold, praise and worship gold hoarders, hope one day to be a dragon)
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Percolating Questions
My thoughts have been unclear for a while now, as I'm sure has been apparent, and I've had a hard time picking a new direction. Too many questions, too afraid of the answers I think. A lot of this started when I came out of the closet and started allowing myself to question everything more, although I think some predate it. Come to realize, allowing yourself to question everything is a good first step, but then you need to actually look for answers, which I've more or less been too timid to do I think.
Here are some of the things I'm thinking about in random moments on a daily or weekly basis:
Do I overthink everything?
Having left my childhood religion, what do I think of spirituality?
Is spirituality a thing people need, or a delusion created by religion? (in other words, are the dogmatic atheists right?)
How do I deal with death? Must I proudly embrace oblivion with no hope of anything beyond to be a good person?
Do I really believe in anything beyond a material, clockwork universe? Am I a positivist, materialist?
Do I have an emotional need to believe that the world is weirder, and bigger than it appears because of how I was raised?
Did I receive adequate training in dealing with the disquieting existential questions that arise from being a sentient ape?
What is the shape of my worldview, now that I consciously wish to abandon the one I was raised with?
How many unconscious adventist assumptions still shape my current worldview?
How important is it to me that I be purely rational? Or purely irrational?
Am I allowed to reserve judgement until I've gathered more information?
Do I really want to write?
Would I be any good at writing?
Is there any point where I'm going to stop talking about it and just do it?
Ditto for piano and music.
Ditto for swimming and exercise.
Ditto for Japanese and language.
Am I every going to abandon childish whining about the difficulty of striving and be and adult and strive?
Do I have a clear definition for adulthood? Is it important to have one?
Am I on my way to being a better person?
Just how much damage did a long devotion to comics, games and glowy, tappy things do to my attention span?
What do I do about the amount of injustice in the world?
Is there anything to do about it?
How much of the misery I'm told to consume as "news" am I responsible for?
Do I spend too much time looking at the forests and not enough time at the trees?
How do I coexist with people, when people frustrate me so badly?
How do I exist with myself when I frustrate myself so badly?
Do I need to relax? Or could people stand to behave better?
Where is the fine line between defending my boundaries and being an asshole?
Where is the fine line between being reasonable and being a doormat?
Where is my community now? Where are my people?
Why do I subject myself to the gaming community?
How to I find social groups concerned with bigger questions than "is my game fun enough?"
How do I structure my environment?
Is it important to be choosy about the tools I surround myself with?
Am I too much of a luddite about glow screens?
Is it okay to be tired of staring at glow screens?
Are there more questions about technology to ask than "is it new? is it shiny? does it give me social capital?"
Do I have a better criteria for whether to adopt a new technology and could I convince anyone else to agree?
How do I survive in a culture that seems to value so many things I don't value as core values without seeming like a crazy person?
Am I a crazy person and no one's told me?
Am I too much like my father?
Am I not enough like my father?
How do I fight self-righteousness while still fighting for principles?
What are my principles?
Am I fighting for anything or just whining?
Why do I feel like I'm standing still so much of the time?
What will it take to move forward?
Do I overthink everything?
Here are some of the things I'm thinking about in random moments on a daily or weekly basis:
Do I overthink everything?
Having left my childhood religion, what do I think of spirituality?
Is spirituality a thing people need, or a delusion created by religion? (in other words, are the dogmatic atheists right?)
How do I deal with death? Must I proudly embrace oblivion with no hope of anything beyond to be a good person?
Do I really believe in anything beyond a material, clockwork universe? Am I a positivist, materialist?
Do I have an emotional need to believe that the world is weirder, and bigger than it appears because of how I was raised?
Did I receive adequate training in dealing with the disquieting existential questions that arise from being a sentient ape?
What is the shape of my worldview, now that I consciously wish to abandon the one I was raised with?
How many unconscious adventist assumptions still shape my current worldview?
How important is it to me that I be purely rational? Or purely irrational?
Am I allowed to reserve judgement until I've gathered more information?
Do I really want to write?
Would I be any good at writing?
Is there any point where I'm going to stop talking about it and just do it?
Ditto for piano and music.
Ditto for swimming and exercise.
Ditto for Japanese and language.
Am I every going to abandon childish whining about the difficulty of striving and be and adult and strive?
Do I have a clear definition for adulthood? Is it important to have one?
Am I on my way to being a better person?
Just how much damage did a long devotion to comics, games and glowy, tappy things do to my attention span?
What do I do about the amount of injustice in the world?
Is there anything to do about it?
How much of the misery I'm told to consume as "news" am I responsible for?
Do I spend too much time looking at the forests and not enough time at the trees?
How do I coexist with people, when people frustrate me so badly?
How do I exist with myself when I frustrate myself so badly?
Do I need to relax? Or could people stand to behave better?
Where is the fine line between defending my boundaries and being an asshole?
Where is the fine line between being reasonable and being a doormat?
Where is my community now? Where are my people?
Why do I subject myself to the gaming community?
How to I find social groups concerned with bigger questions than "is my game fun enough?"
How do I structure my environment?
Is it important to be choosy about the tools I surround myself with?
Am I too much of a luddite about glow screens?
Is it okay to be tired of staring at glow screens?
Are there more questions about technology to ask than "is it new? is it shiny? does it give me social capital?"
Do I have a better criteria for whether to adopt a new technology and could I convince anyone else to agree?
How do I survive in a culture that seems to value so many things I don't value as core values without seeming like a crazy person?
Am I a crazy person and no one's told me?
Am I too much like my father?
Am I not enough like my father?
How do I fight self-righteousness while still fighting for principles?
What are my principles?
Am I fighting for anything or just whining?
Why do I feel like I'm standing still so much of the time?
What will it take to move forward?
Do I overthink everything?
An Attempt at Clarity
Some of my conversations about religion might be a little confusing to long-time friends or even the casual observer. The piece I wrote a few days ago discussing gay men, christian or otherwise, and the christian church's reaction to them was an attempt to talk about christianity within christianity's own rule set. I should probably be clear that I myself do not identify as christian currently and probably will not in the future, assuming organizational christianity continues to insist ostracizing lepers is key to following a guy who went out of his way to show kindness to lepers. In other words, I cannot support it so long as their actions and rules seem so completely out of alignment with the broader principles they claim to be founded on.
Having said that, this does not mean that there is no redemption for Christianity, this does not mean I think all christians are intolerant assholes, this does not mean I can't see a way for them to be decent to gay people quite easily within the philosophies of their own religion. It does not mean I want to reconvert either, but I'm trying not to be pointlessly antagonistic when talking with christians about these things. And sometimes I do that by trying to argue one doesn't need to tear christianity down entirely or concede victory to the sexual revolution entirely to find a way to find brotherhood with gay individuals. Indeed, I'm pretty prudish for a gay man and I know many who DO consider themselves christian and DO have gay relationships and, as surprising as this might be to secular and religious alike, DO want to wait until marriage to have sex and value chastity. I'm not quite, ahem, as chaste as that, but I feel for the people in that position, who are actually more or less aligned culturally with the church congregations they want to be party of, and are on the same page regarding the sanctity of marriage between two people, but who the church members refuse to let themselves see as brothers and sisters.
So yes, I have my negative opinions about institutional christianity. I don't believe the modern incarnation is something I really want to be a part of, but part of that frustration is, having soaked in that religion for over 20 years, I can see clearly how there is plenty of 'wiggle' room theologically to abandon the culture war, let go of gay panic, and start being decent to people who are not them again. But in so arguing, I need to be decent to people who are not me, also. So sometimes, I try to write from that point of view, and make the argument using their own internal logic. Whether that's really the most effective kind of writing I should be doing is another question, of course. But I don't mean to dishonestly imply that I'm a true believer. Nor do I want to give the impression that "not of christianity" means "intrinsically hostile to christian people who just want to be better, kinder people."
And lets face it, that's kind of the default isn't it? So much online discourse starts from "you're not in my circle and you're ruining everything." followed by "no, YOU heathens are ruining everything!" Which, frankly, I'm completely exhausted by. So these are my halting, attempts to find my voice and find a way to actually talk to people about this stuff, rather than launch rhetorical cruise missiles from 20,000 ft, not caring who it hurts on the other end. Ideally I want a world where I can talk to Christians, and be listened to, and listen to them, without needing to buy into their worldview wholesale and vice versa. I mean that's basic pluralism, but it seems to be something most of us have a hard time with anymore. And that's not great, you know?
My writing is imperfect. My ideas are imperfect. But I am trying.
Having said that, this does not mean that there is no redemption for Christianity, this does not mean I think all christians are intolerant assholes, this does not mean I can't see a way for them to be decent to gay people quite easily within the philosophies of their own religion. It does not mean I want to reconvert either, but I'm trying not to be pointlessly antagonistic when talking with christians about these things. And sometimes I do that by trying to argue one doesn't need to tear christianity down entirely or concede victory to the sexual revolution entirely to find a way to find brotherhood with gay individuals. Indeed, I'm pretty prudish for a gay man and I know many who DO consider themselves christian and DO have gay relationships and, as surprising as this might be to secular and religious alike, DO want to wait until marriage to have sex and value chastity. I'm not quite, ahem, as chaste as that, but I feel for the people in that position, who are actually more or less aligned culturally with the church congregations they want to be party of, and are on the same page regarding the sanctity of marriage between two people, but who the church members refuse to let themselves see as brothers and sisters.
So yes, I have my negative opinions about institutional christianity. I don't believe the modern incarnation is something I really want to be a part of, but part of that frustration is, having soaked in that religion for over 20 years, I can see clearly how there is plenty of 'wiggle' room theologically to abandon the culture war, let go of gay panic, and start being decent to people who are not them again. But in so arguing, I need to be decent to people who are not me, also. So sometimes, I try to write from that point of view, and make the argument using their own internal logic. Whether that's really the most effective kind of writing I should be doing is another question, of course. But I don't mean to dishonestly imply that I'm a true believer. Nor do I want to give the impression that "not of christianity" means "intrinsically hostile to christian people who just want to be better, kinder people."
And lets face it, that's kind of the default isn't it? So much online discourse starts from "you're not in my circle and you're ruining everything." followed by "no, YOU heathens are ruining everything!" Which, frankly, I'm completely exhausted by. So these are my halting, attempts to find my voice and find a way to actually talk to people about this stuff, rather than launch rhetorical cruise missiles from 20,000 ft, not caring who it hurts on the other end. Ideally I want a world where I can talk to Christians, and be listened to, and listen to them, without needing to buy into their worldview wholesale and vice versa. I mean that's basic pluralism, but it seems to be something most of us have a hard time with anymore. And that's not great, you know?
My writing is imperfect. My ideas are imperfect. But I am trying.
Sunday, September 07, 2014
Today's Quotes from Technics and Civilization
"Of all forms of wealth, money alone is without assignable limits. The prince who might desire to build 5 palaces might hesitate to build five thousand: but what was to prevent him from seeking by conquest and taxes to multiple by thousands the riches in his treasury?" (p. 24)
"...to think in terms of mere weight and number, to make quantity not alone an indication of value but the criterion of value--that was the contribution of capitalism to the mechanical world-picture. So the abstractions of capitalism preceded the abstractions of modern science and re-enforced at every point its typical lessons and its typical methods of procedure." (p. 25)
"Capitalism utilized the machine, not to further social welfare, but to increase private profit: mechanical instruments were used for the aggrandizement of the ruling classes. It was because of capitalism that the handicraft industries in both Europe and other parts of the world were recklessly destroyed by machine products, even when the latter were inferior to the thing they replaced: for the prestige of improvement and success and power was with the machine, even when it improved nothing, even when technically speaking it was a failure." (p. 27)
Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford
Thursday, September 04, 2014
Apocalypse Dreamin'
All the gods are dead
and the sky is gray.
I went for a walk,
On the world's last day.
I'd be getting warm
At the hellgate in L.A.
Here it's raining blood
On the world's last day!
and the sky is gray.
I went for a walk,
On the world's last day.
I'd be getting warm
At the hellgate in L.A.
Here it's raining blood
On the world's last day!
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