Loneliness can exist, of course, all throughout the time of growth and development.
One distinction for the loneliness I sporadically experience (or which, perhaps, underlies even my most crimson moments of sweet solitude), is that these days, compared to when I was younger, my loneliness is no longer quite so wedded to victimhood.
An old blog I used to write in had the tagline "I opt to be misunderstood".
Of course, this was intentionally provocative; It spoke as much about my rebellion as it did about my desire to be loved, cared for, and indeed, understood and comprehended.
These days, there is a loneliness which presupposes that, actually, there will indeed be times when I will not be understood, and that this misunderstanding may be as much about others' lack of capacities to understand as it may be about either my own inability to communicate something comprehensibly, or about my own defeatedness about the elusive nature of "comprehension"; allowing myself to be swallowed up in the identification with Mystery.
Not to "be mysterious", but to be ... allowing of Mystery to be what works its way through me/us, or that supercedes any human attempt at comprehension.
This loneliness is victimless.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Thursday, October 2, 2014
The World’s Politest Protesters
"Rather than presenting scenes of smashed shops or violent confrontations with the police—the sort of images we have grown accustomed to in Cairo, Ukraine, and other sites of popular protests against oppressive regimes—the photos from central Hong Kong show smiling students sitting around doing their homework, passing out donations of food, and meticulously picking up litter—even sorting out the recyclables. What, then, is different about these Hong Kong demonstrators? And how might their almost exaggerated politeness help them against the notoriously severe Chinese Communist Party? The answers to these questions can be found in the appropriately titled “Manual of Disobedience.” Published online several days before the Occupy Central campaign was set to begin, the document (written in Chinese and English) is part how-to guide and part philosophical mission statement. It details the movement’s tactics, the rules for nonviolent protest, the legal codes that may be violated, and the exact procedure to follow should someone be arrested. It also implores protesters to “avoid physical confrontation, but also to avoid developing hatred in [their] heart,” and explains that the protests must be a model of the values that they are striving to see in their society, namely “equality, tolerance, love, and care.” The protesters understand that these values will not only help win over sympathizers, but lay bare the illegitimacy of the regime if it moves against them with excessive force. These aren’t youthful idealists; these are savvy political operators who understand the secrets of successful nonviolent resistance."
-
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/10/occupy_central_s_polite_protesters_the_hong_kong_demonstrators_are_disciplined.html
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
An historiography of Buddhism
Buddhism strikes me as being one of the relative "golden children" of world religions in white/Western Australian awareness. Unlike Catholicism, which has to contend with its all too famous examples of the mistakes and abuses of institutional power, Buddhism does not have a centralised institutional authority for all Buddhists around the world.
Unlike Islam, which has to defend and differentiate away from ongoing violence committed in its name, Buddhism is typically associated with pacifism or non-violence, apoliticism or quietism.
Unlike, also, Judaism, Jewish-ness, and Zionism, which are poorly differentiated in many people's minds, Buddhism, as a religion, has not been quite as tormented by the loss of homeland, nor people, in diaspora, not as much rooted by a (historically understandable) will to statehood.
Buddhism is conflated more with meditation, its doctrines hinting at being a "psychology" or a "science of the mind". Buddhism talks about actions and consequences, outside of the machinations or whims of an intervening Divinity outside of one's own intentions, motivations, and habits. There are wholesome and unwholesome actions, loving and non-loving actions. The teachings of Buddhism are referred to, in Sanskrit, as the Dharma.
"Buddhism" itself is an invention of post-European contact with a plethora of cultural, spiritual, philosophical, ritualistic and political expressions, which have enough family resemblances with one another to be described under a unifying, and historically quite racialised, category of "Buddhism". Buddhism has been racialised, in that the category "Buddhism" was historically constructed as an amalgamation of many expressions of non-European "Otherness" (in all their beauty/exoticism, as well as their frightening and unfamiliar dangers) and, in descriptions, conflated the expressions of Buddhism with "Orientals" and "Asians".
Part of the evolution of a religion like Buddhism, then, is that the religion itself, the term "Buddhism", itself already indicates its precipitated encounter with a historically more "White" or "Western" or "European" sensibility, and forms of categorisation of religions or religious difference. Just as historically "white/European-dominant" cultures become more intentionally multicultural (however effectively) in their makeup, so Buddhism itself begins to write its own history anew.
Asia goes Christian
and white Australia goes Buddhist.
Who is writing whose history?
Unlike Islam, which has to defend and differentiate away from ongoing violence committed in its name, Buddhism is typically associated with pacifism or non-violence, apoliticism or quietism.
Unlike, also, Judaism, Jewish-ness, and Zionism, which are poorly differentiated in many people's minds, Buddhism, as a religion, has not been quite as tormented by the loss of homeland, nor people, in diaspora, not as much rooted by a (historically understandable) will to statehood.
Buddhism is conflated more with meditation, its doctrines hinting at being a "psychology" or a "science of the mind". Buddhism talks about actions and consequences, outside of the machinations or whims of an intervening Divinity outside of one's own intentions, motivations, and habits. There are wholesome and unwholesome actions, loving and non-loving actions. The teachings of Buddhism are referred to, in Sanskrit, as the Dharma.
"Buddhism" itself is an invention of post-European contact with a plethora of cultural, spiritual, philosophical, ritualistic and political expressions, which have enough family resemblances with one another to be described under a unifying, and historically quite racialised, category of "Buddhism". Buddhism has been racialised, in that the category "Buddhism" was historically constructed as an amalgamation of many expressions of non-European "Otherness" (in all their beauty/exoticism, as well as their frightening and unfamiliar dangers) and, in descriptions, conflated the expressions of Buddhism with "Orientals" and "Asians".
Part of the evolution of a religion like Buddhism, then, is that the religion itself, the term "Buddhism", itself already indicates its precipitated encounter with a historically more "White" or "Western" or "European" sensibility, and forms of categorisation of religions or religious difference. Just as historically "white/European-dominant" cultures become more intentionally multicultural (however effectively) in their makeup, so Buddhism itself begins to write its own history anew.
Asia goes Christian
and white Australia goes Buddhist.
Who is writing whose history?
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Developmental Diversity
Workshopping an idea: Developmental Diversity.
I have been interested in a number of adult developmental frameworks in the past few years. By adult development, I mean here across a range of different indicators: The capacity to hold complexity and paradox, capacity to hold different perspectives, capacity to prioritise perspectives depending on criteria also largely of one's own choosing (or consent).
Part of the treasures of any society, then, is its ability to also hold and nurture and support developmental diversity. I mean this as an alternative to "disability". At the same time, I acknowledge that the term "disability" invites a conversation into the ways that some manifestations of the diverse expressions of human development are experienced by self and others as "disabling" from fullest enjoyment and participation in culture according to one's ability or potential.
In other words, I propose the idea of developmental diversity to both support existing disability rights/justice frameworks, while at the same time to precipitate an additional conversation about developmental possibility.
Developmental diversity spans a spectrum of human potentialities. It does not pretend mere relativism, in which developmental differences are seen as all "equal" in capacity or potential. It understands difference and hierarchy simultaneously: That there are some developmental stages for certain people who are more able to hold complexity and paradox than others, to hold more diverse/different/divergent perspectives with less angst than others, that are simultaneously more able to prioritise these perspectives depending on criteria of their own choice than others, after sincere self-interrogation and study, while they are also more able to cultivate an ability to articulate the reasoning behind this choice in a way that could be comprehensible to as many people from a range of developmental abilities as possible.
Developmental diversity, then, is not even exactly a theory or a principle, either. It is a lived experience of the fullest of one's own potential: That we can be so attuned to the diversity of our own developmental capacities (e.g. I can do some things well, I need more support for some other things), that we naturally and simply experience instantaneous compassion and empathy for other people, including people who may be "so different" from ourselves... Others' supposed differences become seen partially also as representations of part of who we are in ourselves, that we may keep more hidden or that we are hindered from knowing of ourselves.
Developmental diversity is a statement of fact. We live in a world in which different individuals and peoples have different developmental abilities, also developmental contexts which both liberate and constrain the abilities that we begin to, or that we can adopt. While developmental diversity is an observable fact of all cultural contexts, it is also a prescriptive way of living, in which the plain recognition of this fact itself can be existentially reorienting for some people.
Myself included.
I can spot the reality of developmental diversity in my society (e.g. some people are more mathematical, some more emotive, some people can see racism more easily and truthfully than others, some people can identify with "Europeanism" with more ease than others, some people can understand sexism in ways that I can never understand because of, for example, lived experience of being women which would shape their own development in a way that it is more privvy to some other forms of sexed/gendered phenomena than I could be). By recognising that there is a diverse range of lived experiences, genetics, cultural contexts, and "languaging" that people experience in the world, and that this affects how people "develop" (that is, qualities which signal their unique expressions of adaptivity) in their cognitive/perspectival abilities, I am immediately more empathic to how I can relate to different people, if at least by simply remaining agnostic and curious.
Even when people engage in behaviours that are pathologically offensive and horrid, murderous and unjust, I immediately see that they are representations of some part of myself that I have kept tamed, hidden, or transmuted. For example, the violence of young men drawn to fundamentalist expressions of religion, are related to my own early worldviews, shaped by ethnocentrism and listless testosterone. I know that feeling, and I know the injustice of not having alternative role models who could teach me kindness, courage, resilience, forgiveness and critical engagement.
I see the work to be done around this, then, does not only entail "going overseas" or leaving my own context in order to shape global outcomes... It is also in fostering a relationship to that sort of energy here in my own contexts.
For example: How do I relate to lost boys here? How am I complicit in a personal or professional world in creating a world with lost boys? What is the call from lost boys? What spiritual leadership is being called for?
And this is just one example.
Developmental diversity is, by its nature, also somewhat synonymous with "spiritual diversity" (insofar as "Spirit" can be seen, in one definition, as but the principle of growth and development), with an added connotation of materiality around it.
Just some thoughts for now...
I have been interested in a number of adult developmental frameworks in the past few years. By adult development, I mean here across a range of different indicators: The capacity to hold complexity and paradox, capacity to hold different perspectives, capacity to prioritise perspectives depending on criteria also largely of one's own choosing (or consent).
Part of the treasures of any society, then, is its ability to also hold and nurture and support developmental diversity. I mean this as an alternative to "disability". At the same time, I acknowledge that the term "disability" invites a conversation into the ways that some manifestations of the diverse expressions of human development are experienced by self and others as "disabling" from fullest enjoyment and participation in culture according to one's ability or potential.
In other words, I propose the idea of developmental diversity to both support existing disability rights/justice frameworks, while at the same time to precipitate an additional conversation about developmental possibility.
Developmental diversity spans a spectrum of human potentialities. It does not pretend mere relativism, in which developmental differences are seen as all "equal" in capacity or potential. It understands difference and hierarchy simultaneously: That there are some developmental stages for certain people who are more able to hold complexity and paradox than others, to hold more diverse/different/divergent perspectives with less angst than others, that are simultaneously more able to prioritise these perspectives depending on criteria of their own choice than others, after sincere self-interrogation and study, while they are also more able to cultivate an ability to articulate the reasoning behind this choice in a way that could be comprehensible to as many people from a range of developmental abilities as possible.
Developmental diversity, then, is not even exactly a theory or a principle, either. It is a lived experience of the fullest of one's own potential: That we can be so attuned to the diversity of our own developmental capacities (e.g. I can do some things well, I need more support for some other things), that we naturally and simply experience instantaneous compassion and empathy for other people, including people who may be "so different" from ourselves... Others' supposed differences become seen partially also as representations of part of who we are in ourselves, that we may keep more hidden or that we are hindered from knowing of ourselves.
Developmental diversity is a statement of fact. We live in a world in which different individuals and peoples have different developmental abilities, also developmental contexts which both liberate and constrain the abilities that we begin to, or that we can adopt. While developmental diversity is an observable fact of all cultural contexts, it is also a prescriptive way of living, in which the plain recognition of this fact itself can be existentially reorienting for some people.
Myself included.
I can spot the reality of developmental diversity in my society (e.g. some people are more mathematical, some more emotive, some people can see racism more easily and truthfully than others, some people can identify with "Europeanism" with more ease than others, some people can understand sexism in ways that I can never understand because of, for example, lived experience of being women which would shape their own development in a way that it is more privvy to some other forms of sexed/gendered phenomena than I could be). By recognising that there is a diverse range of lived experiences, genetics, cultural contexts, and "languaging" that people experience in the world, and that this affects how people "develop" (that is, qualities which signal their unique expressions of adaptivity) in their cognitive/perspectival abilities, I am immediately more empathic to how I can relate to different people, if at least by simply remaining agnostic and curious.
Even when people engage in behaviours that are pathologically offensive and horrid, murderous and unjust, I immediately see that they are representations of some part of myself that I have kept tamed, hidden, or transmuted. For example, the violence of young men drawn to fundamentalist expressions of religion, are related to my own early worldviews, shaped by ethnocentrism and listless testosterone. I know that feeling, and I know the injustice of not having alternative role models who could teach me kindness, courage, resilience, forgiveness and critical engagement.
I see the work to be done around this, then, does not only entail "going overseas" or leaving my own context in order to shape global outcomes... It is also in fostering a relationship to that sort of energy here in my own contexts.
For example: How do I relate to lost boys here? How am I complicit in a personal or professional world in creating a world with lost boys? What is the call from lost boys? What spiritual leadership is being called for?
And this is just one example.
Developmental diversity is, by its nature, also somewhat synonymous with "spiritual diversity" (insofar as "Spirit" can be seen, in one definition, as but the principle of growth and development), with an added connotation of materiality around it.
Just some thoughts for now...
Thursday, August 21, 2014
interventions
Several experimental thoughts on intervening in public displays of racist aggression. Lessons learned from recent Darlinghurst cafe situ (Google if u don't know what I'm referring to), to be applied to public transport.
Heroism:
Simply encouraging the calling out or telling off the perpetrator may not be a battle we could win. They generally will have made it clear that they are not willing to be educated. It may help to role model heroism, but will likely just lead to an escalating yelling match.
A Proposal for building an Alternative Intervention:
I admit it - in this cultural climate of generally avoidant politeness and averted gazes, I find myself cowardly, hard to imagine myself able to step up so publicly to intervene, for fear of breaching the norms of quiet, multiculturalist propriety, fear of direct violence in just a sea of silent, terrified witnesses.
I would, however, like to experiment with turning to the person sitting next to me, to solicit verbal agreement around the horror of the situation.
"Oh my God, don't you think this is fucked up and racist?" I could say. They might nod, "Yes."
Then turn to the person sitting in the other side of me, "hey, what do u think? Isn't this awful?"
"Yes," they might, hopefully, respond.
Gathering, gathering consent, "buy-in" for more public intervention.
Keep bringing other passengers to account for their own feelings. Invite them to identify with their better selves. Appeal directly, personally, to their sense of justice. We will all witness this happening. Attention has been brought away from the fear of racist monopoly, into our confidence in collective righteousness.
"don't u think this is fucked up?"
more witnesses, to a cabin, a carriage, a tram full of "Yes".
Heroism, here, becomes much more likely, a choir has been built, a visible groundswell of support, the perfect place to precipitate more public preaching.
Someone, here will more likely publicly intervene.
Maybe you?
Maybe me.
Heroism:
Simply encouraging the calling out or telling off the perpetrator may not be a battle we could win. They generally will have made it clear that they are not willing to be educated. It may help to role model heroism, but will likely just lead to an escalating yelling match.
A Proposal for building an Alternative Intervention:
I admit it - in this cultural climate of generally avoidant politeness and averted gazes, I find myself cowardly, hard to imagine myself able to step up so publicly to intervene, for fear of breaching the norms of quiet, multiculturalist propriety, fear of direct violence in just a sea of silent, terrified witnesses.
I would, however, like to experiment with turning to the person sitting next to me, to solicit verbal agreement around the horror of the situation.
"Oh my God, don't you think this is fucked up and racist?" I could say. They might nod, "Yes."
Then turn to the person sitting in the other side of me, "hey, what do u think? Isn't this awful?"
"Yes," they might, hopefully, respond.
Gathering, gathering consent, "buy-in" for more public intervention.
Keep bringing other passengers to account for their own feelings. Invite them to identify with their better selves. Appeal directly, personally, to their sense of justice. We will all witness this happening. Attention has been brought away from the fear of racist monopoly, into our confidence in collective righteousness.
"don't u think this is fucked up?"
more witnesses, to a cabin, a carriage, a tram full of "Yes".
Heroism, here, becomes much more likely, a choir has been built, a visible groundswell of support, the perfect place to precipitate more public preaching.
Someone, here will more likely publicly intervene.
Maybe you?
Maybe me.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Terrorism
As I become more "professionalised" within particular political and public spheres, I sense in myself a swelling of sadness; The so-called "real world", in its current Australian form in the unfinished business of racist settler colonialism, and the myopic pathologies of either modernist materialism or religious fundamentalism, all burdened by the whims of global capital, can bludgeon the warrior in me, can tie a knot in my heart, can stifle the will to truth-telling.
Security, of course, is not itself the problem: It is more in that any will to security begets a concurrent arising and creation of the Other, from whom I must keep myself and all my material comforts protected, "secure". The Other, of course, the embarrassing Other, will constantly change their guise, in tandem with my changing Selfhood, the "Me" whom I keep aloof, detached, arrogantly removed, and "gated" from an Other, in order to preserve the status quo of any of my assimilationist dreams.
In all of this, an addiction to the pursuit of security will put a lid on the effervescence still in me, who chooses art and dreams transformative justice.
I know I might become too comfortable...
That I, like too many others, will become habitually afraid.
This is what terrorism is.
Security, of course, is not itself the problem: It is more in that any will to security begets a concurrent arising and creation of the Other, from whom I must keep myself and all my material comforts protected, "secure". The Other, of course, the embarrassing Other, will constantly change their guise, in tandem with my changing Selfhood, the "Me" whom I keep aloof, detached, arrogantly removed, and "gated" from an Other, in order to preserve the status quo of any of my assimilationist dreams.
In all of this, an addiction to the pursuit of security will put a lid on the effervescence still in me, who chooses art and dreams transformative justice.
I know I might become too comfortable...
That I, like too many others, will become habitually afraid.
This is what terrorism is.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Memory
Multiple generations globally diasporic,
I learn the stories of my family and extended kin, Chinese men and women, not too long ago, who have suffered and continue to suffer unconscionable poverty, hunger, and all correlated heartache...
...I think about the wealth I have grown up with,
the comfort I have known from security,
the many material luxuries I regularly take for granted,
yet I am so often melancholy, in my solitude.
I can admire their perseverance, tenacity, resilience,
all this too, a privileged envy, even as
sadness still continues to beat
ceaselessly in my heart,
swollen with unresolved ancestral memory.
I learn the stories of my family and extended kin, Chinese men and women, not too long ago, who have suffered and continue to suffer unconscionable poverty, hunger, and all correlated heartache...
...I think about the wealth I have grown up with,
the comfort I have known from security,
the many material luxuries I regularly take for granted,
yet I am so often melancholy, in my solitude.
I can admire their perseverance, tenacity, resilience,
all this too, a privileged envy, even as
sadness still continues to beat
ceaselessly in my heart,
swollen with unresolved ancestral memory.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Resilience
One typical exhortation from a conservative political mentality is to both acknowledge the reality of social ills, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, while at the same time suggesting that the best way to deal with these social ills is not through government investment in institutions that promote cultural reform (e.g. affirmative action at universities, funding indigenous media, etc.), but rather through a promotion of individual resilience.
More cynically and simply put,
"Life sucks. Get over it."
On the other end, a more "progressive" or left wing response tends to push for cultural and social reform, rather than individual heroism, in the response to and eradication of these very social ills (e.g. racism/sexism/homophobia). One unfortunate tendency of this, however, may be that, in order to maintain this very sort of response as it is chained to the whims of American-hegemony and global capitalism, is to unwittingly search for the very ills that we stand against, so that we can galvanise, legislate, or fund the appropriate response.
In both these extremes, I present my cynicism as a reaction to the excesses and blindspots of either approach. To encourage only resilience without social reform is to subtly bully those who are more vulnerable, who are not "tough enough" to weather the storms of everyday life; not to mention that this can well give full license to the bullies, who are never held accountable by this politik. At the same time, to encourage only social reform without an occasional nudge toward a "realpolitik" of encouraging one another to recognise our very strengths, our resilient tendencies, may be to unwittingly mire those of us who are oppressed in the very terms of our victimisation. That we may never "get over it" until someone else, or something external to us changes.
That is a lot of power to give away.
As a middle path, I am interested in the model of social groups and peer support in which both political forms are explored, where people can role model resilience for one another, while collectively agitating for political and social change. Where, aside from role modeling, this agitation for political change is itself an expression of that very resilience, because it is contingent on a scaffolding of collective support and coalition, not only on individual heroism.
More cynically and simply put,
"Life sucks. Get over it."
On the other end, a more "progressive" or left wing response tends to push for cultural and social reform, rather than individual heroism, in the response to and eradication of these very social ills (e.g. racism/sexism/homophobia). One unfortunate tendency of this, however, may be that, in order to maintain this very sort of response as it is chained to the whims of American-hegemony and global capitalism, is to unwittingly search for the very ills that we stand against, so that we can galvanise, legislate, or fund the appropriate response.
In both these extremes, I present my cynicism as a reaction to the excesses and blindspots of either approach. To encourage only resilience without social reform is to subtly bully those who are more vulnerable, who are not "tough enough" to weather the storms of everyday life; not to mention that this can well give full license to the bullies, who are never held accountable by this politik. At the same time, to encourage only social reform without an occasional nudge toward a "realpolitik" of encouraging one another to recognise our very strengths, our resilient tendencies, may be to unwittingly mire those of us who are oppressed in the very terms of our victimisation. That we may never "get over it" until someone else, or something external to us changes.
That is a lot of power to give away.
As a middle path, I am interested in the model of social groups and peer support in which both political forms are explored, where people can role model resilience for one another, while collectively agitating for political and social change. Where, aside from role modeling, this agitation for political change is itself an expression of that very resilience, because it is contingent on a scaffolding of collective support and coalition, not only on individual heroism.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Financial Goals
My goal is to make more money, and spend less per day.
In order to attain the former, I intend to apply for more/other jobs
and in order to do the latter, my goal is to spend not more than $10 a day for the month of August (except on bills and groceries).
In order to attain the former, I intend to apply for more/other jobs
and in order to do the latter, my goal is to spend not more than $10 a day for the month of August (except on bills and groceries).
Health
Under colonial capitalism
in which I see myself primarily as a cog in a machine or as a perpetual migrant in need of being proven worthy of all the privileges of colonial citizenship,
I take a day off of work so I can go to the doctor
and this feels like an act of indignant protest.
How lucky!
how pathetic
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Everyday after the Revolution is Samsara
Even upon the triumph of anticolonial struggle,
Each day is still Samsara. The winners of this war are as human as the losers were, that is,
with all the capacity for oppression (and redemption) that this humanity implies.
The oppressed become the oppressors
And there is no time to be in the least bit surprised.
This, of course, does not mean that I abandon my will to justice,
My will to nudge and edge toward this sort of revolutionary cultural change that is the rightful work of any ethically engaged person...
I tread carefully.
Only that this work itself is foolhardy if it imagines its completion as the summit of all human endeavour. We are tracing a dangerous precipice, not only climbing a mountain.
There is a deep and horrid wellspring of loneliness amidst the hypnotic meaning making of the progressive Left, whose espoused values I mostly share... This loneliness, of course, is not strictly the province of the Left, but it strikes me as part of the poverty of relationship that seems concurrent both with secular multiculturalism and its ethnocentric, parochially conservative counterparts.
This poverty of relationship is not easily remediable either by simply being in the company of others nor by my journaling about it, as if being so identified and named, it might wistfully take its leave of our era.
Solo meditation too, in the highly individualistic models of the imported Buddhism, while deeply nourishing, will not suffice.
For a young and heroic Left, I sense that our hearts must neither harden, nor indeed that we remain only tender and soft to witnessing suffering.
No, I am exploring that we must be collectively heart broken.
Our hearts must break, open.
We must grieve with the people who are not us, who may never be like us.
We must grieve as if all the lost loved ones in the world were our own lost, loved ones.
Grieve, not only in outraged sentimentality, but also as if we have lost our lover to betrayal and deceit.
Grieve and hurt and be hurt and be wounded and broken open to the fullest ache of abandonment and the loss of faith in our future or in any possibility for an alternative...
For when we are so fully defeated, in this sense, we will become stronger again. Wiser. We will be cautious, of course, yet we will love again. We will love again. We will remember our past foibles with fondness! As global citizens, we will cease to either sentimentalise violence or forget the good that was always present among history's oppressive and tragic victors, that we were never "written out of the story", but were simply listening.
We have been listening.
We are still listening.
Each day is still Samsara. The winners of this war are as human as the losers were, that is,
with all the capacity for oppression (and redemption) that this humanity implies.
The oppressed become the oppressors
And there is no time to be in the least bit surprised.
This, of course, does not mean that I abandon my will to justice,
My will to nudge and edge toward this sort of revolutionary cultural change that is the rightful work of any ethically engaged person...
I tread carefully.
Only that this work itself is foolhardy if it imagines its completion as the summit of all human endeavour. We are tracing a dangerous precipice, not only climbing a mountain.
There is a deep and horrid wellspring of loneliness amidst the hypnotic meaning making of the progressive Left, whose espoused values I mostly share... This loneliness, of course, is not strictly the province of the Left, but it strikes me as part of the poverty of relationship that seems concurrent both with secular multiculturalism and its ethnocentric, parochially conservative counterparts.
This poverty of relationship is not easily remediable either by simply being in the company of others nor by my journaling about it, as if being so identified and named, it might wistfully take its leave of our era.
Solo meditation too, in the highly individualistic models of the imported Buddhism, while deeply nourishing, will not suffice.
For a young and heroic Left, I sense that our hearts must neither harden, nor indeed that we remain only tender and soft to witnessing suffering.
No, I am exploring that we must be collectively heart broken.
Our hearts must break, open.
We must grieve with the people who are not us, who may never be like us.
We must grieve as if all the lost loved ones in the world were our own lost, loved ones.
Grieve, not only in outraged sentimentality, but also as if we have lost our lover to betrayal and deceit.
Grieve and hurt and be hurt and be wounded and broken open to the fullest ache of abandonment and the loss of faith in our future or in any possibility for an alternative...
For when we are so fully defeated, in this sense, we will become stronger again. Wiser. We will be cautious, of course, yet we will love again. We will love again. We will remember our past foibles with fondness! As global citizens, we will cease to either sentimentalise violence or forget the good that was always present among history's oppressive and tragic victors, that we were never "written out of the story", but were simply listening.
We have been listening.
We are still listening.
a day of reckoning
Oh life...
May I not be addicted to miracles,
that every stupendous achievement may become so quickly mundane,
and that the ordinary, once miraculous
will continue to inspire my humility,
as if I were simply
washing my bowls on the very moon to which I once pointed.
May I not be addicted to miracles,
that every stupendous achievement may become so quickly mundane,
and that the ordinary, once miraculous
will continue to inspire my humility,
as if I were simply
washing my bowls on the very moon to which I once pointed.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Paracetamol Rant
What of poverty or of wealth?
To be made humble in the face of the changing face of the perpetrator or the victim, whose gender or colour continue to morph wildly in a sickening preservation of privilege, power and pain, whose triumph or destruction on begets more of the same, an endless cycle of birth and death and rebirth of a gulf between peoples, greed breeding envy breeding hatred breeding violence.
A hermit prays in silence, a cave for shelter,
Or an inherited condominium ruined by alienated citizenship and class guilt.
A child whose limbs are bombed off by violent and paranoid settlers,
Whose parents are burned alive, with only a journalist left to bury the dead.
So many cities and civilizations risen and then razed by ambition and parochialism,
Lands swollen with latent forests bursting out of fertile Earth, disregarding any memorialisation of human impact.
Stone Age temples whose walls continue to be dusty with the salt of the dried sweat of slaves,
long dead,
Whose walls still echo ancient holy chants, multiple generations of monks and kings whose fervent faith and footsteps continue to reverberate through the temple halls.
No history is lost or discovered, only written and reconstructed.
Heritage is a choice; patterns and lineage can be illuminated in so many ways... Slightly more essential than arbitrary, yet way more deliberative than deterministic.
Today, I choose among my heritages, China, Malaysia, Singapore, America, Australia.
I choose, among my heritages, Peranakan, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, and Pink Dot.
I choose, among my heritages, faggot grief and assimilationist defeat.
I choose, among my heritages, larrikin hope, and all the unfinished business of a world in constant change.
There is no tipping point... Revolutions are like the bursting forth of a collective will to cum, after the tension of preceding processions has become too much to hold or bear. Brief, jubilant relief... And still there is always that undertold story of the aftermath of orgasmic revolution... Not all cigarettes and starlight, not all smiles and deep sleep.
As the grandeur of people power subsides, the dawn may bring crumbled memories of a yesteryear no longer here,
Or worse still
That impending recreation of all the chronic ills that plagued us prior to revolution.
We are separated from one another, once again.
The beatings continue, among ourselves.
To revolve, revolve, revolve... Cycles and cycles of possibility and despair
A quiet evening, on a comfortable chair,
Sipping coffee,
Homesick for a culture that does not exist or has not arrived,
Building, brick by brick, a new world to house a childhood that was never quite as innocent as my memory might cherrypick.
The future is brightest at noon.
To be made humble in the face of the changing face of the perpetrator or the victim, whose gender or colour continue to morph wildly in a sickening preservation of privilege, power and pain, whose triumph or destruction on begets more of the same, an endless cycle of birth and death and rebirth of a gulf between peoples, greed breeding envy breeding hatred breeding violence.
A hermit prays in silence, a cave for shelter,
Or an inherited condominium ruined by alienated citizenship and class guilt.
A child whose limbs are bombed off by violent and paranoid settlers,
Whose parents are burned alive, with only a journalist left to bury the dead.
So many cities and civilizations risen and then razed by ambition and parochialism,
Lands swollen with latent forests bursting out of fertile Earth, disregarding any memorialisation of human impact.
Stone Age temples whose walls continue to be dusty with the salt of the dried sweat of slaves,
long dead,
Whose walls still echo ancient holy chants, multiple generations of monks and kings whose fervent faith and footsteps continue to reverberate through the temple halls.
No history is lost or discovered, only written and reconstructed.
Heritage is a choice; patterns and lineage can be illuminated in so many ways... Slightly more essential than arbitrary, yet way more deliberative than deterministic.
Today, I choose among my heritages, China, Malaysia, Singapore, America, Australia.
I choose, among my heritages, Peranakan, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, and Pink Dot.
I choose, among my heritages, faggot grief and assimilationist defeat.
I choose, among my heritages, larrikin hope, and all the unfinished business of a world in constant change.
There is no tipping point... Revolutions are like the bursting forth of a collective will to cum, after the tension of preceding processions has become too much to hold or bear. Brief, jubilant relief... And still there is always that undertold story of the aftermath of orgasmic revolution... Not all cigarettes and starlight, not all smiles and deep sleep.
As the grandeur of people power subsides, the dawn may bring crumbled memories of a yesteryear no longer here,
Or worse still
That impending recreation of all the chronic ills that plagued us prior to revolution.
We are separated from one another, once again.
The beatings continue, among ourselves.
To revolve, revolve, revolve... Cycles and cycles of possibility and despair
A quiet evening, on a comfortable chair,
Sipping coffee,
Homesick for a culture that does not exist or has not arrived,
Building, brick by brick, a new world to house a childhood that was never quite as innocent as my memory might cherrypick.
The future is brightest at noon.
Pain Ramble
There is something lonely about harbouring chronic pain... While there may be others who have been through analogous ills, whether psychic or somatic, our own pains are humble reminders of our vulnerable separateness... Others can share interpretative tools to these pains, giving us perspective, convincing us of their relative inconsequentiality or impermanence (say, by offering imminent cures), or even by suggesting that we are not the first to have experienced anything quite as dire, but we are ourselves left to consent or not to consent to these interventions, nursing the sensations that course through our bodies and mind ourselves... Our any words, sounds, or convulsions but meek translations of an otherwise very private ordeal.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Impatient
I am feeling impatience around the ethical incompetence of bureaucrats in relationship building and community accountability.
Where does the money come from?
Where does the money go?
So much of this feels extraordinarily abysmal and heartbreaking and soul-destroying
at the same time that I cannot blame her and her and him,
nor will I overindulge in that exhausting spiritual gimmick (however relevant) of fixating on my own complicity...
I simply want to remain here
Yelling.
While everybody, including the gentler side of my own conscience,
simply shuts the fuck up
and listens.
Where does the money come from?
Where does the money go?
So much of this feels extraordinarily abysmal and heartbreaking and soul-destroying
at the same time that I cannot blame her and her and him,
nor will I overindulge in that exhausting spiritual gimmick (however relevant) of fixating on my own complicity...
I simply want to remain here
Yelling.
While everybody, including the gentler side of my own conscience,
simply shuts the fuck up
and listens.
Thoughts on Education
Some reflections...
One of the things I love most about moving through this period of my life is about my capacity to educate.
It is not that I necessarily wish to over-identify with the role of "teacher" or even of "educator", though they may be expediently and contextually pleasurable identities to loosely hold; rather, I am interested in how I am called into being a conduit between various schools of knowledge.
There is the Subject (which will be taught), the Teacher (who teaches the subject), and the Student (who is taught).
The Teacher teaches the Subject to the Student.
This, of course, is a conventional approach to education, and one which works perfectly well as a framework under many circumstances.
What I am interested in, in that process of transmission, where the Teacher is taught as much on the Subject as the Student is, through the process of Teaching.
It may be a cliche, but the best way to learn really is to teach!
Students ask provocative questions, questions that the Teacher cannot always answer... In that sense, the role of the Teacher is not necessarily the person who IS the repository of knowledge, but rather, is the conduit between a privileged access to knowledge and the Students who await, search for, or who are indeed, active co-participants in this transmission.
A learning community then.
One of the things I love most about moving through this period of my life is about my capacity to educate.
It is not that I necessarily wish to over-identify with the role of "teacher" or even of "educator", though they may be expediently and contextually pleasurable identities to loosely hold; rather, I am interested in how I am called into being a conduit between various schools of knowledge.
There is the Subject (which will be taught), the Teacher (who teaches the subject), and the Student (who is taught).
The Teacher teaches the Subject to the Student.
This, of course, is a conventional approach to education, and one which works perfectly well as a framework under many circumstances.
What I am interested in, in that process of transmission, where the Teacher is taught as much on the Subject as the Student is, through the process of Teaching.
It may be a cliche, but the best way to learn really is to teach!
Students ask provocative questions, questions that the Teacher cannot always answer... In that sense, the role of the Teacher is not necessarily the person who IS the repository of knowledge, but rather, is the conduit between a privileged access to knowledge and the Students who await, search for, or who are indeed, active co-participants in this transmission.
A learning community then.
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