Pages

Email!

musings...

If you like what you see here, or if you have anything you would like to share do send an email:
psychonauterotica@gmail.com

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Free Writing

Wrote this at RISE


Free Writing

Writing is free, they say
So I pay to hear this again
I pay to remind myself of how
I am already free.

Free before I pay for any thing
Free before anything is paid for
Free before anything is priced beyond my grasp.

Then, I remember also, that:
Nothing comes for free. I hear
That nothing comes for free, I hear that
We do not own this beautiful planet, we
Merely borrow it from our children...

This planet cannot be paid for, as
This planet has already been paid for

And this planet has been made for
those who write ourselves free.

Made for those of us who write, despite never knowing
if anyone will read what we have written,
Despite never knowing
if anyone will understand our voice,
This planet has been made for those of us who write because
We have no other choice.

I write because
I have no other choice,
but to be free.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Solidarity Politics

A reflection on two under-fleshed out politics of solidarity:
1. Cognitive Ableism & Neurotypicality
2. Ageism & Adultism

The former can manifest as:
"If you haven't read this essay, you're not in the know, you're not smart enough, you're not progressive enough, you're just not good enough!"
"If you don't speak the right language, if you misspell words, if you don't know how to Google, you're just lazy and uneducated!"

The latter can manifest as:
Endless bickering, macho outwitting, an inattention to the importance of gradual development of inclusion and radicalisation of individuals and communities, spaces which are primarily folks in our 20s/30s, and with little room for the wisdom of elders, or accusations of "selling out" (and the attendant ostracism) when people account for the shifting priorities that come with aging within an imperfect and oppressive system

They both manifest as:
A stigma around imperfection, impatience, characterisations of people as "backward" or "retarded" or "living in the past" for having problematic politics, and a rejection of relationship in the service of abstract idealism.

In brief, I relate to the above as a part of what I call the concerns of "developmental justice", which underlie many of the issues that I see plaguing (identity) politics in general, and of the Left in particular.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Liberty

"With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself … while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men… Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty … Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty."


Tuesday, April 22, 2014

heroism

the problem with valorising heroes
may be the unwitting complicity in maintaining the conditions
in which heroism becomes necessary

my gnosis

I'm not self-hating, nor self-abnegating
I'm mostly just
self-agnostic,
that is,
my gnosis belongs to no one in particular.

Chineseness

China rises,
as do I.
Perhaps I'll be Chinese
long after I die.

Til then, I'm chaotic.
Multi-generationally diasporic.

English is my language,
honed and crafted in a body that is Chinese
and a mind that alchemically works
to integrate these, even as:
This language is my language
English belongs to me.

There is no original language
Everything is translation.

I was not Born Chinese.
I have claimed it.

Monday, April 21, 2014

post-Easter

Watched the Passion of the Christ two nights ago
reflected on the message of Jesus, that sign of anti-establishmentarianism
persecuted by corrupt Jewish leaders, colonised by Romans

Pontius Pilate, the Roman executioner, is depicted in Mel Gibson's film as a sympathetic character,
while the Jews are depicted as swivelling, irrational masses...
the exceptions, of course, being Jesus himself, mother Mary, Mary Magdelene, and Paul the Beloved

I am supposed to understand this story, because it is famous.

Reflecting on Mel Gibson's decision to portray the agent of empire (Pontius Pilate) as a sympathetic character, displaying his compassion and ambivalence about sentencing Jesus to torturous crucifixion.

Reflecting on the "benevolence" of the agents of empire...
the "Good Cops"...

Reflecting on Mel Gibson's anti-Semitism, elsewhere displayed

Reflecting on the story of Jesus, who begs his Father to forgive all who have betrayed Him, for they do not know what they do, what they have done

Father, the vengeful God, not only all-knowing, all-loving, all-forgiving,
but also Punishing...
destroys the Temple.

God the Punisher.

Everywhere, people are suffering unspeakable horrors of injustice, everywhere Jesus is alive in the crucifixion of innocence
in asylum seekers banished to indefinite imprisonment off of Australian shores
but I wonder if I can maintain faith in any Resurrection
when there is too much suffering still being inflicted in Jesus' name

"God, why hath Thou forsaken me?"

Are these the days of martyrs? Can there be any martyrs left? and in whose name shall they act?

Sunday, April 20, 2014

This Easter, may I not be myopic.
May I learn the right lessons of history to dream more loving, compassionate, wise and sustainable futures
into each arising moment.

May all living beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all living beings be liberated by insight, foresight and action.

Offence

One can cause offence
without intending offence.

Offence can be based on incorrect interpretation of intent
or it can be based on the problems and ignorance implicit in the content
of its Utterers

To be offended is neither noble nor ignoble... this extends to when I am legitimately offended by hateful or willfully ignorant remarks.

In these latter two senses, I say that my being offended is neither noble nor ignoble
because nobility arises dependent on how I respond to my own having been offended.

I can blame the Other who has offended me, and attribute 100% of responsibility upon them to change their behaviour, apologise to me, or express a deep remorse... And this may be a justifiable response to those of us who have been hurt by racist malice, privileged ignorance, and so on.

But I cannot pretend that this is noble:
My resilience cannot rely on others changing.

Misunderstandings are a necessary by-product of civic development, even as they are unpleasant and often, retrospectively, "unnecessary"...

They are necessary in that all action and orientation toward cultural innovation involves risks. Risks that are sometimes dangerous enough to warrant our expulsion from the very polities in which we took them, if we fail.

When our racist ignorance has cost people their jobs or their opportunity for home and food, this is unacceptable and must be held to account.

At the same time, this holding to account cannot detract the "holder" from a firm conviction in our own Wholeness, already... in particular, our inseparability from the Offender who is being held to account.

Let me not be myopic.

Australia's rapidly degenerating relationship to asylum seekers
does not begin with the current government,
nor the one just prior,
nor the ones prior to that.

It does not begin with the Stolen Generation
nor the White Australia policy

It does not begin with European settlement and colonisation of this land
nor with the British Empire
nor with feuding Aboriginal nations

It does not begin strictly with autopoietic human folly
nor with Divine improvidence.

Let me not be myopic.

Degeneration comes in forgetting
that there are futures
we once knew how to dream

evolution

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

- Richard Buckminster Fuller 

Thursday, April 17, 2014

They Long to Become Visible Again



















They Long to 

Become Visible Again


written by me 

@RISE
in the company of some excellent people...


We paint ourselves in all shades of red,
Wishing to look more like what we know we are on the inside...
The more red we get,
The more transparent we become to one another

And that, say some of us,
is liberation.

Others, we paint ourselves blue, as skies, as we aspire to be,
Higher than we are, the peaks of our potential we have not yet met,
or blue as lakes, or the oceans of all that we hide.

Perhaps not so much hidden
As curated, like we were workers in a colonial museum of ourselves, with Rooms that hold the sum total of all of our diverse identities and life's experiences,
of sounds and smells and languages we refuse to forget,
But that others only politely nod at.
Smile at,
As if they could ever really understand.

I paint myself each morning when I wake up.
Paint myself with water and hair cream
Paint myself with fabric relevant for temperamental Melbourne weather
I have painted underneath my skins with needles and ink
Not only because I have had something to prove,
But because this is what culture is!

Alive, to each moment, unfolding in my body as it meets yours and yours and his and hers
In schools, at work, on public transport
We wear ourselves painted and read one another like scripts.

Culture is inquiry and celebration,
Or despondency, procrastination,
A yearning for saviours, or a game for a messiah complex
seeking desperate players

All of this needs to be loved and cherished and humbly released
Each night again, we go naked unto ourselves
Each night, I go naked, again, unto myself
Each morning, I get up again, to paint.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Discomfort #2

Just because something is uncomfortable does not make it true.
Just because something is uncomfortable does not make it untrue.

Discomfort is not the same as pain.
Causing discomfort is not the same as causing suffering.
Causing pain is not the same as causing suffering.
Suffering can be triggered even without a resultant experience of discomfort or pain, or at least, without a resultant experience that may be languaged as such.
Suffering can be in compulsivity, petulance, aggression.

Just because I cause you discomfort or pain does not mean that I have caused you suffering.
Where suffering lies is in the razor-thin line between what my actions may have triggered for you (by way of discomfort / pain), and how either of us then chooses to respond to what has arisen.

This does not mean that I choose to intentionally cause pain/discomfort (this would be Malice),
but only that I do not allow the fear of causing pain/discomfort distract me from the quest to Truth, a deep interrogation, as well as a deep listening for Truth.

Truth will liberate.
And what it liberates may be very, very painful.

Ideally, truth is multifaceted enough
that, coupled with loving and compassionate intention,
that its liberation will come not only with the pain, but with its wisdoms for Resilience.

Discomfort

Reading my old post below about Yin deficiency, and "cuntic" energy.

Feeling into the rage of that post, that, regardless of the truth of the admonition,
it is also about thwarted masculinity.

And this is why I feel so uncomfortable. Not that she did no wrong (she did, and it was gendered, and it was problematic, etc. --> all still true), but that this wrong hit at a particular expectation I have in me... not that powerful women should not exercise their power, but rather, that I should be a "good man" and somehow live up to some expectations of myself that refuse to see the gendered nature of that abuse toward her (in this case male) subordinate.

That I should somehow "neutrally" experience this as a "neutral" abuse of power that is pathological regardless of the gender of the people involved (either the perpetrator or the subordinated).

This is what was discomforting...
That I experienced the sharp, glass-like gendered nature of this, reminding me that I am not "above" this level of observation. That I am not so feminist as to forget the suffering that some women uniquely catalyse, that I am not so "enlightened" that I would forget my own timidity, my own faggotry, that I am, at heart, sometimes, still a lonely teenage gayboy, wanting to do good, but chronically afraid of being told that I do not matter.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Privilege

Privilege is getting to pick the battles I want to fight.

Monday, April 14, 2014

The pressure to choose


As per this Calvin and Hobbes strip, I suggest that the terms of a conflict, that is, the way that a conflict is described, is actually a composite part of the conflict itself.

For example:
To describe a conflict as, say, having to choose between condemning homophobia (and thus alienating a swath of, hypothetically, more sexually-conservative Muslims) or condemning Islamophobia (and thus alienating a swath of atheist or anti-religious gays).

The above description in itself invites the reader into identifying with variations of the "Good and Ethical Subject".

I am either the Good and Ethical Subject who sides with the gays,
or the Good and Ethical Subject who sides with the Muslims.

It is not enough either, to propose the following rhetorical alternative to this conflict, which is the existence of the gay Muslim (who acts as a mediator between the aforementioned parties).
i.e. "What about gay Muslims?!"

Those who are invested in the terms of the conflict will bear no such thing.
"He has to choose!" both fundamentalists will proclaim,
"He has to choose between his homosexuality and his Islam!
Homosexuality or Islam!
He cannot do both!"

**

In a way, both the gay Islamophobe and the Muslim homophobe are caught in the same ideological trap: of Ethnocentrism, or the belief that it is my own collective (which absents the ideological Other) that is more worth protection from intrusion or harm than yours or more accurately, theirs.

In other words, it is not that Muslim homophobia or gay Islamophobia should be uniquely addressed as issues (true as this assertion may be in particular contexts), but that they are both expressions of a common commitment to ethnocentrism, a universal human propensity that, while developmentally appropriate in certain contexts, becomes dangerously pathological when mired in an inability to be creative in an increasingly pluralist and diverse world... Ethnocentrism must be adequately attended to across the board, in all of its variations. 

Part of dealing with this is to actually notice the ways that organising around minoritarianism (i.e. identification with the oppressed minority) is always contingent, in part, on an unwitting capitulation to the terms of this disenfranchisement. 

Far from blaming the victim, I intend to point this out as a route to true freedom. As a gay man, the way for me to truly eradicate homophobia is not only to target it and address it in others (e.g. the homophobic Muslim), nor even only to address it in myself (i.e. dealing with my own internalised homophobia), it is to also truly cultivate the possibility for a larrikin betrayal of my own identity, a sincere abandonment that intends no nobility but can simply bear a privileged and detached witness to the categorical lie.

My true freedom, as a gay man, is in my ability to cease to be a gay man.
Not in ceasing to desire other men, or having sex, but in ceasing to allow these particular desires or actions over-determine the formation of my personhood, at the same time that I would advocate it should not be over-minimised or repressed either.

Incidentally, of course, this is an incipient narrative in the evolution of gay discourse, as it evolves its own "queer" trajectories, its postmodern leanings toward the blurriness of sexual categories (not only of homosexuality and heterosexuality, but also of manhood or womanhood, of the boundaries between what-is-sex and what-is-not-sex). In this case, going more deeply into my "gay-ness" can actually present the means by which I can reject its original terms and liberate new possibilities for coalition and freedom.

Note:
This strategy is not the same as the abandonment of commitment to people or communities, but only an abandonment of the drive to see people, including our own people, only as variations of "Self" or "Other".


Perhaps, to radically re-envision people as always "Both Self And Other"...?

"I am a gay man and not a gay man. I am homophobic and not homophobic. I am not Muslim... and I am Muslim!"

Or perhaps, more accurately, "Neither Self Nor Other"...

"I am neither a gay man nor not a a gay man. I am neither homophobic nor not homophobic. I am neither not-Muslim... nor am I Muslim!"

And this is what liberates me to be free to be contextually and communally relevant, as new and emerging forms and definitions of community are constantly defining and redefining what it means to be a People...

...I radically embrace my brethren, through my abandonment of "brethrenism".

***

To put it another way, freedom can be liberated not in the attempt to answer seemingly irreconcilable situations or bridge seemingly irreconcilable communities (e.g. between the Islamophobic gays or the homophobic Muslims), but, as per the Calvin and Hobbes strip, to deny all terms and conditions.

Every ideology and every community can be a straw target for intellectual game-playing...

I suggest a form of a-politicism (i.e. "this is meaningless and impossible to answer"),
an abandonment of identity politics...
...to embrace the impasse,
the impossibility,
the irreconcilability,
the restless nature of the dualism,
to reject its ideological premises,
to make room for something quiet and more enduring to take its stead...

...Relationship. Friendship. Comradeship.
Class struggle.
Decolonisation.

***

I look forward to that time when we have the strength, the conditions, and the collective will to properly reject even this aforementioned claim, to liberate more inventive, relevant inquiries and insights.

In The Future, We'll Outsource Sex

Slavoj Žižek: In the future we'll outsource sex



"Romance is maybe not yet totally dead, but its forthcoming death is signalled by object-gadgets which promise to deliver excessive pleasure but which effectively reproduce only the lack itself.

The latest fashion is the Stamina Training Unit, a counterpart to the vibrator: a masturbatory device that resembles a battery-powered light (so we're not embarrassed when carrying it around). You put the erect penis into the opening at the top, push the button, and the object vibrates till satisfaction … The product is available in different colours, levels of tightness and forms (hairy or without hair, etc) that imitate all three main openings for sexual penetration (mouth, vagina, anus). What one buys here is the partial object (erogenous zone) alone, deprived of the embarrassing additional burden of the entire person.

How are we to cope with this brave new world which undermines the basic premises of our intimate life? The ultimate solution would be, of course, to push a vibrator into the Stamina Training Unit, turn them both on and leave all the fun to this ideal couple, with us, the two real human partners, sitting at a nearby table, drinking tea and calmly enjoying the fact that, without great effort, we have fulfilled our duty to enjoy."



a Pattern

someone I disagree with, either in opinion or in method.

they become "a type of person who is disagreeable".

all their future actions are stained not only by the memory of their previous errors, but by their entire Being-in-error

thus gives rise to the birth of the prejudicial epithet (e.g. "fag", "cunt", "slut")

in time, it is simply forgotten what actions this person may or may not have engaged in, nor what opinions they may or may not have espoused

all their positive actions will be exceptions to the rule that is their Being-in-error
all their mistakes will confirm my bias

Reality

I get to choose my reality!!!!
....from a range of available models reality has chosen for me.*

*While stocks last

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Today

Today...

Ressentiment.

some of the thoughts of the moment

Queer asylum seekers
Women and Islam
Is anyone ever silent?
Is silence always disempowerment?
Who gets to speak?

I am welling up with tears.

All the American artists of colour traveling to Australia riding on the wealth of a global hegemon built by slavery and genocide
and I get to gasp in awe.

The stone temples of Angkor in Cambodia
which inspire pilgrims and tourists thirty for the sacred
were commissioned by monarchs
that worked their slaves to skin and bones and death
to build their religious empire...

Now every liberal multiculturalist wants to say that they have been.

I have been, brought to my knees

I am welling up with tears.

The world is a strange place filled with strange travellers
who come from here and there and that
who master thoughts and concerns I could never even imagine
and I am one of them for You and You and You
and I am one of You for Them and Them and Them.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Studying Chinese Medicine

Studying Chinese medicine is kind of like studying poetry, more than like studying medicine...

And, like studying poetry, it can be extremely medicinal.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Middle Class Organisers in Low-Income Communities

"Often the paid organizers in low-income communities come from professional middle-class backgrounds. I worked as a community organizer for many years, and the class dynamics can be tricky. Nearly everything I know about poverty and urban politics, I learned from members of groups I staffed. I loved the relationships I built with people on their stoops and around their kitchen tables.

Seeing people move from less to more powerful was exhilarating. Here's one story. I was trying to persuade tenants at an apartment complex to come to a City Council hearing. Knocking on doors, I asked one woman, Donna, to come, she said no, I pleaded. Finally she said she would attend but she absolutely wouldn't say a word, because she was terrified of public speaking. She sat at the hearing listening to testimony, until a tenant leader mentioned the lack of sidewalks between their apartment complex and the shopping area. At that point Donna leapt up, saying, "Ooh! I have something to say about that road!" She took the mic and told a hair-raising story about how a car came within an inch of hitting her child while she was pushing a stroller and trying to get 3 kids down to the bus stop. The City Council voted on the spot to appropriate money for a sidewalk — something that wasn't even on their docket of proposals. Last time I visited that city, I walked that sidewalk, grinning the whole way.

And of the five tenant groups I organized, three now own and run their own apartment complexes as permanently affordable housing, so I feel I made a real difference.

But it's a tricky relationship with many pitfalls, the relationship of middle-class organizer to working-class community.

I've encountered groups that were basically fronts for one staff person, usually a leftist white man. The low-income members were basically his mouthpieces. All their speeches were written by him, using their legitimacy as low-income people to spread his ideas. In the power balance between the staff's expertise and the members' knowledge of the community, those groups were way off balance.

Grassroots members get crucial information funneled through the organizer, information they need to make decisions. The staff can convey their biases either consciously or unconsciously in how the information is presented. I remember presenting choices to tenant groups about models of tenant buy-outs — decisions that would make all the difference in the future of their homes — and trying not to let my own opinions show. If I had concrete information about why one option would be better for them, that seemed fair to share, but if it was just my own preference, I tried not to betray it. No doubt I didn't always succeed, as my doubts and enthusiasm crept into my tone of voice"


Betsy Leondar-Wright,
Program Director,
Class Action

5 of Pentacles

Kidney Yang deficient?
Po-cu

There is shelter, still, close by.

Just because you are cold, or worn down,
does not mean you are not still resilient.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Just organised my desk

Turned out,
I don't need more things per se...
I need more tools to organise the things I already have...

Like goes with like.

So today, I got stationery holders, mini table drawers, lightweight stackable shelving, etc.

My life feels better already.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Class Matters

An excellent website I'm starting to read...:
Class Matters --> http://www.classmatters.org/

Could you embrace that?

Could you Embrace That
by Thomas Aquinas

"I said to God, ‘Let me love you.’
And he replied, ‘Which part?’
‘All of you, all of you.’ I said.
‘Dear’ God spoke, ‘You are as a mouse wanting to impregnate
a tiger who is not even in heat. It is a feat way
beyond your courage and strength.
You would run from me
if I removed my
mask.’
I said to God again,
‘Beloved I need to love you – every aspect, every pore.’
And this time God said,
‘There is a hideous blemish on my body,
though it is such an infinitesimal part of my Being-
could you kiss that if it were revealed?’
‘I will try, Lord, I will try.’
And then God said,
‘That blemish is all the hatred and
cruelty in this
world.’

a blessing

"May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, hunger, and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor."


- a four-fold benedictine blessing - sr. ruth marlene fox, osb - 1985

Every day, I do something to redeem myself.

Everyday is an expulsion of my sins, my evil, my illness, my disease
Everyday, I come out as a new shiny butterfly
still slimy from its cocoon

The world is full of amazing little creatures.
Insects, arachnids, worms,
Snails, slugs and leeches
I am alive to the small,
I am from the small, of the small.

Grateful for this life.

.

because.

False.

I am a False Revolutionist,
A False Prophet.
Don't listen to me.
Every word I utter is a lie.

I cannot deny who I truly am, which is my utter Fallacious character.
I am an insult to injury,
I am salt in wounds,
I am the Arrogant God who Fell,
I am the Hell that awaits my mortal self.

I am ok.
I am ok.
I am a baby, a teardrop, a pearl.
A puddle, a poodle, a prince or a girl.

I am a football fan, I am her super hot, aggressively heterosexual, beer guzzling, bushy-bearded boyfriend.
I am his open heart and his tenderness,
I am asleep, once more.

You were with me when we were together,
I was with you when we were together
We were together when we were with one another.
This much is true.

defeated, I am still here

even after surrender,
I survive as a diminished version of a former self,

I can now be ready to receive You more fully

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

crystals break

freedom comes from ordinary moments suffused with awareness of their ephemerality
life is but a dream, i was told
i row, row, rowed a boat down gently down a sullen stream.

All possibilities are exhausted,
Thy will be done!

breath in, breath out... all hearts will be ablaze
at the sight of Him.
He. My Father, Lord and Savior.
My Mistress, Lady, Landlord
My Guard, my Protector, my Ejaculator
My Phallus, my Philistine introspections
my arms are spread out wide palms up
ready to Receive.

Buddha sat under a tree
while it dried and drizzled all around him, season to season
til he Awoke,
and then he walked and rested for the rest of his life.

***

"I want to make a Difference!"
"My simply being here already makes a Difference"
"I am the Difference I want to see in the World!"
"I hate being an Other."

***

Australia:
One day, it was brighter than the land could understand,
so it brought drought and this was what it was about.

I am Australian

Second Wave me: "Hello. Hello."

sometimes I will make myself understood even
by the thinnest of strings
sometimes I will be the thinnest string
in a well-strung violin

In bowing, I will sound the highest note,
and no one would get anything done!

because I could

...
...
...
...

Don't smoke the medicine, son.
It hits you too quickly, rather than
wafting in slowly from within you, in incremental ripples
beginning from my liver all the way to the tips of my hairs and the bottom of my toes.

This is strong stuff.

All this medicine.

Self-help books, manuals of this and that, bric-a-brac
Golliwogs displayed proudly in rural Australian fairs
Oriental still Eastern still Asian til

"Where are you from"
a familiar ringtone, leading to
"let me eat you out from your most private places"
then, frankly
"how often must this occur?"

a dream of something better, a live once lived, could have lived, mostly already lived,
also many state experiences of being fully lived, yet always:
the dream
of something better

the will to growth, development
sprouting from seedling under sun into
marigold or mushroom

sometimes, words will continue to haunt my every conscious moment, carving out,
as they do,
myriad differentiations out of indivisible eternity.

"Don't smoke this herb..."
Son
a religion founded on a special Sun
a religion founded on a special Son
a religion founded on a wand, magic, sex, rage

***

...
...
One day, I will be understood
as the Narcissist that I truly am
that sincerely, no one can ever fully understand me
not even me
and therefore, I am made eternally unknowable
except through all my arrogant traces

***

not exactly Narcissist,
also muse, someone else's Other
who becomes part of the self that I have become obsessed by
all others, indeed, filling in my sense of who "I" am, indubitably and even necessarily,
and I am left as no longer the small sense of my forgettable selfhood that is this lonely lifetime
but in the rewarding larger sum of all life together, weaved into
how I step my next steps.


a lofty goal?
a foolish dream?
an ever unfolding reality?

Nonsense. No one needs to know the new apartment.
I can speak truthfully and will be understood by even stony things.

I have nothing.

Sometimes, it's ok to feel tired.
Sometimes, it's ok to rest.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Marijuana and Liver Yang

"Regardless of your constitution, because marijuana is primarily a Yin drug, ‘advance and act’ will eventually be replaced by ‘retreat and wait’ in both a short- and long-term context. In the short term, as the marijuana begins to take effect, it can make the user feel temporarily motivated and vigorous but after a period of time, even Yang types end up sitting around doing nothing. They are not in a Liver Yin excess state, as they are not experiencing emotional torment, but it is no longer an exciting or active state either. It is somewhere in between. It is waiting without anticipation. In the long term, this lethargy and passivity previews the kind of state that marijuana use can create on a more permanent basis. Most people, for example, are familiar with the stereotypical image of the ageing hippie or heavy dope smoker who can’t ever get their act together and do anything. This is not a personality type as many people think, it is often a behaviour arising from imbalances caused by excessive marijuana use. Unfortunately, the majority of long-term marijuana users will eventually fall into this category. It is such a slow and insidious process though, that they won’t see it happening. They will just change slowly over time until they eventually forget how active, engaging and energetic they once were.

People with a predominantly Yang constitution and a disciplined and focused lifestyle — which assists in the cultivation of Liver Yang — can regularly use marijuana and remain active and creative for years, maybe even decades. However, even for them, marijuana will slowly deplete Liver Yang and subsequently affect their ability to act upon their ideas. Everyone has a mental picture of who they are, of who they want to be and what they want to do in life. In TCM this is directly connected with the Liver. If you repeatedly take a substance that has a direct impact on the functioning of the Liver, as marijuana does, it can create an imbalance between your visions or ideas, and the impetus to act upon them. The idea becomes bigger and the action becomes smaller so you become more occupied with thinking and talking than doing. This is particularly frustrating for creative or talented people as they still have their creativity but have lost their ability to act. Once this happens, the magnifying nature of the drug, rather than increasing awareness of growth or expansion, increases awareness of being stagnant physically and emotionally. In this state, evidence of achievement in other people can make the drug-user acutely aware of their own deficiencies and they can become emotionally reactive."

- Jost Sauer, a German-Australian, based in Brisbane, from his book "Higher and Higher"