on thinking

"Nothing worth knowing can be entered through the mind." - Woody Allen

It is with delightfuly ironic happenstance that my writing abilities dissapate when I am feeling so much.  Perhaps because my creativity is cognitive, and I can not assign meaning to the things that I am feeling as of late.  It is painful to me that I have become so unprofound, but it is well worth the fruits of my nonlabor.  I am willing to lay down my sword for these sensations.  

And it's not to say that I couldn't create something now.  I could write a poem or a story or a snippet of something or another, but I cannot place into beautiful words what is happening.  My mind could create anything, but my soul just can't describe this thing.  I'm like an artist at his canvas who is attempting to paint a protrait of his lady love.  Scrawling paint across the whiteness, unable to capture the beauty of something truly beautiful.  He could create something alluring, but he is too flawed to create a facsimile of the magnificence which is before him. 

So often I have deconstructed every man that I've ever encountered, any man with a touch of romantic potential.  It's always been the way I screen for who I want to be with.  A mental checklist of desires, a red pen which highlights every flaw.  A running of the brain that did little more than compute a value.  I was afraid that my mind was the only thing that could feel.

I feel, maybe for the first time, that my soul is alive and on fire.  And I don't care if that's irrational, or if I ever become dissapointed.  All I know is that I can never go back to just thinking about love.

on the passivity of a generation

Have we become so comfortable, with our "on demand" society, that we've failed to struggle for the things that are truly important?  Too distracted by the 47 ways to manipulate something as simple as coffee to understand the complexity of human nature?  Satisfied with activism that involves pressing the "forward" button after reading a message with an agenda, or signing an electronic petition with a fake name that will just get lost in the throes of cyberspace?

It's unfortunate that I know the answer to these questions, and simply by writing this myself I have joined the complacent ranks of those who complain about their woes on a nonexistent medium.  It will be read, possibly agreed with, and soon forgotten.

Oh, the many distractions of an era.  We spend so much mental energy in a given day on the evermore crucial decisions to be made.  Venti or grande.  Hip-hop or rock. Comedy or drama.  Where to engage in consumptionism.  Should I spend my paycheck on this pink iPod or this blue dress? What is the devil wearing these days, anyhow?

I believe there was a time that people cared.  I'm beginning to think that it's not en vogue anymore.  It's not plastered on the cover of a magazine, nor can I sense that any periodical is telling the true story of our generation.  When I think about the artistic landscape we have created, I see confusion. Creativity has been replaced by distraction, and this will be passed on as a melody that the future will hear. What will be the indication, as I have heard and seen in preserved traces of past culture, that there has been any struggle for justice?  Will a painting today give any hint of what it was like living in these times, or will style destroy substance beyond recognition?  How will anyone know what has happened to us when they read between the lines of a book?

The critics of my criticism have a favorite answer. When they hear of my nostalgia for a more fulfilling time, they tell me that things have always been this way.  

As if they were there.

As if they were there when people were willing to die for their freedom. True freedom, not the idealized buzz word that has been used to justify killing.  The freedom that breaks the shackles off ankles and gives a woman permission to speak in a room.

As if they were there when atrocities, though carried out, were met with fierce opposition.  No justification of war without a critical eye, and loud voices crying out for the foreign voices we could not hear.  Drowned by firemen's hoses and police batons, silenced by silencers.

As if they were there when the words of a song demonstrated the state of a broken world and the everlasting pain in the soldier's heart.  The power of haunting verses and a discordant chorus not lost in a sea of cacophony.  Bittersweet rhymes that permeated future generations and told the true story of the past in a way I could understand.

Sometimes I feel as if we are a grand, failed experiment under a watchmaker God's eye.  I just don't want him to point an angry, disappointed finger at this phase of results and say, "Here.  This is when they gave up."   

on creativity

I feel sad that I've not produced any writing for a while. This lack of prolific creativity doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that there are people in the world who never tap their creative outlet, and find no loss for never having done so.

I truly believe that the availability of "canned entertainment" is destroying our natural human evolution. Canned entertainment being anything which is produced by a person but is inaccessible without technology. Something that can be placed in a box, etched on a disk, trapped behind a computer screen. While this entertainment may be created by people, those who consume it have no requirement for creativity to enjoy it. How easy it is to be passively entertained.

Im not saying that all canned entertainment is passive, as there are transgressive films, music, and media which provokes the mind and aims to push us forward. But this type of entertainment is heavily outweighed by the garbage which is produced, consumed, and obeyed.

Weve taken our natural progression, centuries of human social advancement, and have become all too complacent. Convinced we have no further sociological development, we have thrust our energies into the lucrative and spiraling faith of technology. Technology. How I loathe and love that word. We sit on the cusp of a technological explosion which threatens to either thrust us to the heavens or shoot us down, down into hell. It threatens like a juggernaut to destroy our true evolutionary path, a path toward meaning and enlightenment.

I believe that the world is being emptied. That people are being made hollow. Crack open the sands of our time and you will find yourself in a desolate place. A desert of a wasteland, where little is heard, but much noise is being spread. Where there is always hope that things will be better, but there is little truth to the promises which are made.

Complacent. How did we become so easily complacent? To accept so easily what is being given, being done, being said to us. Happy to have our shadows of pleasure. Failing to connect, failing to trust, failing to love. It is in finding connections, truths, and love that one begins to realize that everything else is an apparition. Almost like living in a ghost town where you are the only thing which breathes.

Will we allow ourselves, truly allow ourselves, to wake up from our comatose state? Will we find ways to wake up the sleeping giants that dwell within each of us? Will we open the curtains to let in the sun which promises us light, warmth, and love? Or will we continue to overpower our senses, dull our minds, and continue to walk through the dust?

Can we remember what it was like to be ten years old and create entire stories on a rainy afternoon? To talk to the animals and hope that one day they might speak back? Remember the promises that we made to ourselves, as I made, to not suffocate creativity with adulthood distractions? To continue to dream, and play, and search for wonder that lies within all of us. I keep trying to find the stories within those I meet. Sometimes its harder to dig them out, but I have faith they can always be discovered. And I promise to the ten-year-old me that I won't stop writing her story.

on cognition

I spend most of my day in an extremely cognitive state.  It’s hard to escape the thoughts that race through my brain, and even more difficult to interfere with them.  I’ve always had an auditory cognition problem, which I think is quite tragic.  I cannot, for example, listen to music and do anything else at the same time (except dancing and some other physical activities that are done in darkened rooms).  I often find myself driving down the road, jamming out to some wonderful song, when I find the need to think about something.  This is when my hand extends to the switch, as I must turn down the noise.  Completely.

The best explanation I can give, as far as the music goes, is that I am very attentive to the detail in sound.  I listen for lyrics, primarily, followed by guitar leads and chord progressions.  I think about the implications and meanings, especially in my beloved 60s folk songs.  I try to figure out if the song is playable and within my singing range.  I think about who introduced me to the song, or where I heard it for the first time, and what it means to me.  With all of this going on in my head, it leaves little room for anything else.

I spend my days cognitively exhausted, and I wonder if I’ll make it this semester.  I spend my working hours in meetings with two highly intelligent and contemplative Ph.Ds and an equally articulate doctoral candidate.  Then I go to classes where I must constantly evaluate what is being presented to me and trying to integrate my research with the curriculum.  It’s this giant cesspool of words and context and constructions, and I’m not sure what to do with all of it.  Whereas I know I am capable of synthesizing and processing all of these things (as I am growing more and more confident when I compare myself to others in the program, even doctoral students), I’m left knowing that there has always been a defeatist in me.  The tragic brilliance that cannot adhere to anything in fear that it cannot be completely consumed and perfected.

Sometimes, as I’m driving in my car with the windows rolled down, trying to listen to a hackneyed song that I don’t have to engage with, I look at other people through various sets of tinted windows.  I try to figure out if they spend their days in a never-ending river of cognition, or if they have never even ventured to test the waters in the delta.  Then I consider the possibility that I have not emerged myself enough.

on beauty

The range of human attractiveness is vast, despite what the images and thoughts of the media tell us. This doesn't seem to be a novel concept, as we are all told this growing up, most especially us girls who don't fit into the category of movie-star "beauty". You can continue to fight the esteem-reducing depictions of women, the claims that gentlemen prefer blondes, and messages of the cosmetic industry that we pay to make us more desirable. But somewhere in your fight, your soul becomes a little crushed. A little tethered. Extremely fatigued.

Sometimes I ignore the images. I don't watch shows about the 100 most beautiful celebrity bodies. I don't look through the women's magazines. I don't check out the 10 tips for more kissable lips. But they still seep through and eat away at my ability to consider myself striking. I still see the television with the predictable make-up and collagen and hair color, I still see the images of the women who look beautiful in anything they place (or don't place) on their bodies, and I still see that I haven't purchased the right color lipstick to get laid this fall.

Sometimes I ignore my reflection. I don't stand to the side to see how much I stick out in the wrong places. I don't stand up close to examine exactly where that bump in my nose is. I don't turn around to catch a glimpse of my hair. These are the days that I feel the most attractive. Because I can't compare my body to the stars, I can't think about how much it would cost to make my face more appealing, I can't worry about what perfect hair product would get rid of the frizz in my natural curls.

Despite this war which I battle every day (an unnecessary one when you consider all the more important things I could be faced with), I still feel desirable when I look in the mirror. I run my fingertips across my lips, through my hair, down my body, and understand that someone finds me gorgeous. The battle has worn down my cognitive defenses, but my heart still tells me that someone desires to hold me, kiss me, fuck me, in spite of (or perhaps because of) what they've been told to want. I am designed to be consumed by non-consumers. I am proof that radiance cannot be discovered in a bottle. I am evidence that someone finds you beautiful.

A Sociological Treatise on the Patriarchy of the Roman Catholic Church Or How My Faith Made Me a Masochist

There is no denying that the Catholic church is the most erotic, tempting, and succulent faith in the Western world. Saturated with eroticism and sadistic punishments through the centuries, the first time a woman gets down subserviently on her knees for a man, she is doing so within the walls of a Catholic church. Her eyes are emblazoned with the image of Christ nailed to the cross, on an impending crucifix that is the centerpiece of suffering at the Liturgy of the Eucharist. She drinks of the sacrificial blood given to her by a sinful man shrouded in pure white cloth, a man that she is told to call Father. The patriarchal organization treats her like a whore; images of Mary Magdalene, Delilah, Eve, are all flashed before her as Christian examples of womanhood. She is already the perpetual great sinner of the world because she has a cunt between her legs.

Without her knowledge, woman becomes the evil that cannot stop from happening. Every pleasurable thought, every sensual whisper, each caress of her delicate body is a reason for shame, guilt, and sadness. Guilt becomes like leather straps that mark and brand across her back and chest, sexual shame becomes the rocks hurled at her by the crowd that calls her slut, and she is bonded to her sins by the masochistic pleasure that she derives from her public humiliation for private trespasses.

For years, when she entered a mans place of worship, she had to cover her bare arms and her long hair, because it was tempting to the blameless men of the congregation. Long hair, a sign of sexual submission to a man, did not belong in the house of God but on her husbands chest when she lay on top of him at night. The wanton sinner could not flaunt her flaxen hair while kneeling in the pews, she might provoke a man out of his fake celibacy. Always, she is on her knees, feeling every lash of Christs punishment inside of her thighs.

Most of the sexually dominant men I have had interactions with are or were raised Catholic. All their lives, they have witnessed the men being the dominant rulers of society, and specifically of the One Holy Apostolic Church. They are just taking their leads from the Catholic men that are always on center stage, while the women sit in the back pews, cloaked in black and protected by their shame.

Submission grants women their salvation. It is Mary Magdalene that subserviently washes Jesus feet and dries them with her long, beautiful hair. It is only after her submission can we perceive her as a saved woman. We watch Veronica wipe the face of Jesus in the sixth station of the cross, she accepts his blood and tears in this cleansing, sometimes erotic gesture.

It is said, in traditional sadomasochistic theory, that it is really the submissive that is in control. It is of this writers opinion that this in invariably true. A wise older man once told me that it was women who held the church together through the millennia, though the priests stood on the altar with their sacrificial robes, the women of the cloth were the pillars on which the church stood. It is the female Catholic that is taught how to manipulate a man by her sexuality. From the time we are little girls in pure white dresses to the days we spent sneaking fleeting kisses behind the sacred tabernacle, we were taught that it was female sexuality that obtained the head of John the Baptist from an immoral man, female sexuality that took away Samsons impervious strength, innate female sexuality that tempted Adam into biting into the proverbial fruit of good and evil. Through Christian example, I have been taught that the way to get what I want from men comes from the heat radiating from my lustful womb.

As a Catholic woman, I was taught that every sin of the flesh was a reason to repent, to confess my sins to a man that knew nothing about the desires of a young, succulent woman. For every delicious orgasm that rocked through my body, another lash of fire was struck against my soul, preventing me from eternal salvation. However, it is through submission that free will temporarily becomes the responsibility of another, and guilt is erased. It is in the satin collar that wraps around ones neck that deliverance is guaranteed and a lustful appetite can be innocently satiated. As a masochistic Catholic, I have fused my faith with my sexuality, in the most sardonic victory of my soul.