Pride

I was thinking that this post would have a more inventive title, something more quirky, perhaps other-handed or perspectivally different, but I don't much mind. I want to talk about pride, hence this conversation with myself on the surface of a river. The words are floating, and you are reading it as you watch the flow flow. 

Pride, then. I'm talking about the existence of a spectrum - there is extreme pride, which manifests as arrogance, self-importance, but somewhere earlier along the line, which is now a continuum, there is healthy pride, pride that is "taken", and manifests as dedication to the development of a particular discipline or ability. With these two points plotted on this linear graph - drawn against the black using a small concentration of green pixels - I want to reference my own pride.

See, here, I would begin expressing that I do not enjoy being proud. I used to feel like it was right to feel pride, to take pride in for things that I did well, for example, academics. Too, I used to feel like I could read people well, to a superior extent, and thought highly of myself to be able to discern that. Past tense. Now I just remember how it felt, to be proud, but no longer feel the object of the emotion is there. My ability to read people and distinguish emotions, and then aid with them, that was very helpful during high school because it marked out my maturity, yet now, in an older context, I feel my close friends are themselves able to read people, to tell how they are, and help, which is very useful, though I feel it depreciates what made me feel special before. 

Recently, I met with a friend I had not seen for seven years. And I thought that I would get there and psychoanalyse him to see where he stood in the world. Turns out, although I felt the impulse to do it and read him, I didn't need to. He was quite open, and able to read me as well, perhaps, as I was able to read him. Books that read each other. Innovative. I enjoyed seeing him after all this time, and realised while with him that there was not much point in trying to sell myself as having had all these life experiences throughout the past seven years because they shaped me to have the character that I have, to be in the role I play, and it went the same for him. I found myself not needing to feel that pride. I am content with what I have been through, which what challenges I have faced and overcome, and what I am able to do. I am proud I have gotten to this point, but I don't feel the want to express that pride. Could I even call it pride then? I don't show people. I don't tell people achievements. I used to do it off-handedly, for example, I used to show off that I was smart by using big vocabulary. I still do that, actually. But not for the purpose of showing off, at least not consciously so, but rather because I find myself being able to express more with a wider range of vocab. With the friend that I met, he had a very wide range of vocabulary that he was comfortably using, which I enjoyed being in the midst of. For example, he used the word "pentecostal" which I'd not known the meaning of, but he could use it, and later when I looked it up, found that the context in which he used it in was appropriate. Anyway, off-topic. Let's undeviate.

My point up until now, if unclear, has been that I used to show pride, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes subtly so, in who I was and what I achieved, to impress others. And although I feel the urge to do it sometimes still, I have come to think that it no longer matters if I succeed more than others. There is always going to be someone superior at something, in one part or the other of their lives, but because everyone follows a different journey, comparisons between one person or the other seem fruitless and unnecessary. I can be happy that I am where I am, and I am, and I can be happy others are where they are, and I am. It no longer feel like there is any gain, any merit, in saying I am better than you at reading people, or at other things I feel I am great in, like navigating through a city for example. The actual ability has a use, and that is all that is needed to consider. Why think I know how to do something better than you, beyond the simple admittance of the fact? If you are more skilled, be more skilled. I think either way, it does not make either of us a better person, which is how I come to the conclusion that those things I took pride in, were tied to my identity, and that now, I realise they are not so important.

Am I losing my identity, then? Dramatic music and/or silence.

Can't lose what I never had. Can't lose what was never real. The only conclusion that can be drawn, is that the feelings of superiority that I drew from comparing myself to others and being "better" were falsities. So, pride then, when tied to identity, is falsity. So is there merit in taking pride, I now ask, in what I may be good at? Yes, if we loosely undefine pride and let it mean care for the development of that which we take pride in. Healthy self-respect, self-worth, knowing we are whole and appreciating that.

Right. There, conversation avec moi, avec moi, over. 

Communication

With these fingers on my toes,
I've tapped for studs for miles
to find the framing
of the world, this hell -
heaven built for two.

From you to me,
a panic spread of interrupted white lines,
asphalt ways to nowhere,
given-up ants on a hill above the earth.

You, who are so meticulous,
want to distinguish how far apart your knees are as well,
when I'm sitting in the morning.
Let me help you.
There's a man naked in summer hay,
passively smoking what you're giving off
scurrying.

From me to you,
a field of white roses and loose piano keys -
what I am hearing as you're instrumenting.
See, I'm trying to stay silent and listen,
because see you I can't.

Find a rope.
Tie it around your neck, bury an end,
throw yourself into yonder,
then at least I might glimpse an echo
from the paint on your concrete,
to the nuance on my roses.

February 10th, 2012

She kissed me goodbye, a peck on the lips as the bus stopped by the curve. I put one leg on the step, and turned my head, as I remembered how to, and glimpsed. Her mouth was moving, her hands were to her side, one on her camera and satchel, her head leaning towards a friend, but I was too far to pick up on the exchange. On the bus, in my seat, I looked out, waved with my right hand through the pane to my left. They both looked to me, found my face behind the filter, and smiled. The bus drove along Symonds Street, across Grafton Bridge, then past the Auckland Hospital and the Domain to Newmarket. Further away I got, or maybe her bus was just behind mine.

She'd closed the door behind her as she left. I heard a clinkle, then footprints meeting the floor, being etched, and then I couldn't hear them anymore. I was smiling with an inner smile, an inner knowing. The light by the door was still on. I opened it inwards and looked outside to see nothing beyond but the doormat, "Always Welcome". And I stepped upon it, knowing that it felt me, for I was a familiar visitor here, and it knew the weight of my shoes and the shape of my soles. On the wall, to the left of the doorway, was a hook. Rooted in the surface on the floor, I looked for a moment at the hook. Simple. No cobwebs. I knew that she'd taken what hung upon it, probably put it around her neck. I felt a chill, another familiar sensation, the cold breeze of being outside a window, looking in on a fireplace. I realised, once more, that it was cold to be outside my own heart. I turned my head towards the way she left, but knew she would get home before the chill set in upon her. Another inner smile. I walked back into the chamber I'd left and shut the door behind. I felt my pocket and pulled out my own key and inserted it into the hole under the handle. I turned it in my hand, heard a click. Then I turned it back again, unhearing the click, unlocking the door. I pulled out the metal and back it went into my pocket. I'd have to dispose of it later, I thought to myself. I wouldn't need it anymore.

She'd convinced me. She wouldn't need the key either, though she had it with her, around her neck. The door would always be open, and not only for her, but for others, who'd but need to knock - or maybe not even that. I did not need the lock, for I did not want another to feel the chill of looking in at something beautiful, something warm, but not be able to reach it. The doormat is for them, for her, and for me too, when I stray outside and forget why I left.

She kissed me goodbye at the bus stop. I might take the hook down, or leave it there as a reminder of why it's unused. A memento, for when I need to remember. I find it hard to imagine now though, how I could forget. But winters are harsh sometimes, and doors need to be closed or the snow will pile in the doorway. But the logs will still be burning, and I think I will invest in a shovel. Maybe I'll hang it up on the hook.

Sort of a Reading Log

"He looks out the window again. It's drizzling. It's been drizzling this way for the last five days." It could just as well have been five years; these sentences encapsulate and reflect the emotional flow of the book "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller. First published in the 1930s but then banned for 30 years in the US and the UK, this 'fictional autobiography' is a great stone heaved upon the back of a frail, but somehow still standing, man. It is a book of extremes, of dejected spirits and morals that are stamped upon and left disfigured in a puddle on a footpath. It is an urban tale, one of walls and being pushed against them, into them. It felt like an abundance, to imagine the 'portrait of desire' envisioned by Miller, to be placed in the context of a man trying to scrounge for food in a "like-a-whore" Paris full of people that aren't as much people as ambling shells of people. I would venture calling them carcasses implies they have spine, but the way Miller describes the multitude of them pictates them as self-interested puppeteered en masse lumps of flesh. I recall little generosity in the book, and I feel this is where the dark maw that I feel Miller thrashes about in descends from: a lack of empathy.

I picked up the book because Paulo Coelho was himself inspired by "Tropic of Cancer", saying it was written in blood. I share his point of view, now having read it myself. Whether it be menstrual flow, or the blood leaking in the sewers that seems to not travel in the veins of the Parisians Miller encounters, the book is written from suffering, with nails dug out into palms. It is a book of brokenness, a tale of separation and rejection that results in Miller's own soul-searching and its subsequent fruitlessness.

I feel unable to say much about the text beyond that, because it is a text of symbolism and reference, and yet a text of bone marrow and broken test tubes. Perhaps the book can be said to be about emptiness, but rather does it embody that, so that it not merely speaks of emptiness but imparts the experience of it with the reader. I found it difficult to read at the beginning and towards the middle because of my expectation that the book was going to lead somewhere within unchallenged convention, and instead what I found was absurdity. I felt at times that the book was acting against convention, and then at other times that the book recognised convention was unreal and thus had nothing to compare itself to, nor did it care to. It was in those latter times that I felt most able to comprehend Miller's tale, where he stood up and described the world around him, knowing he was part of it, but apart, having to remove himself from the machinations of conventional thinking and from that newfound space, gain perspective. And he pictated it with fuckings, cunts and pricks.

Sex, its definition within the parentheses of the time, is made into a whole paragraph. I put this towards the end, almost like an afterthought, though the truth is that the text is permeated with sexuality, with fireless passion and the possession of bodies by other bodies, their usage and disposal. A modern reader could identify misogyny in the text, though I venture that it ought not to be taken as such. Women are overpowered by men, yes, but I rather feel that the context justifies that, and thus the behavior exhibited spills not from Miller himself but the era he is in, though of this I cannot be sure. The wisdom he is bestowed falls upon the moving piles of still bodies and extended metaphors.

It is worth noting the most striking aspect of the text was the very frequent and rich use of metaphors and literary connections to enrich. The journey, even though content-wise is difficile and challenging to make sense of on a deeper level, is Miller's gift to the reader. The method of imparting wisdom is natural, attention-grabbing and rewarding. "Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space - space even more than time."

As a writer and a human, Miller finds himself unable to meet with the turning of the world. I venture that he doesn't quite find himself either, but rather, his animality, his hopelessness and senselessness, his havenot incarnation, his mirror shard that either cannot reflect or reflects more than is acceptable to know. Yet his exploration, his attempt at living despite the force of circumstance pushing him into the ground, is a struggle, one of reconciliation of selves and self, of parts and whole. And, appropriately, it ends in silence.

From Else

Someone has spilled grey paint over the great table that is the sky; so much paint, that it has seeped through the wood and is morphing into shapes on the underside. There is a hole in the sky. In it I can temporarily see what is on the table: light. Light that shines from a particular angle as to pour onto the leaves of a nearby tree, toning the undersides of leaves and the backs of branches in a hue set on fire. The grass is cut short and as I look down on it from the height of my eyes, I can see all grass united into one vibrating, pulsating lawn that is yet silent. I have the urge to probe my fingers through the green and feel the roots on my fingertips be tugged. Then I want to turn my palm towards the sky and run it further, so that the underside of my hand can mete the undergrowth. There is something quiet that I feel, but a desire, to get beneath things, to see them from below their surface, and feel them work, pulse and sugar upwards dispensed to reach and give appearance to the exterior, the seen blade of grass, the bottom lining of clouds, the sheen of leaves and the disordered delineation of wood.

It is so, with people. There's a certain fascination I feel with the workings of human beings, with the way their cogs of flesh and blood and neurose twist and work to make ideas, to generate worth. It is a machine, and yet it works by a design that cannot always be planned and predicted. It is fascinating for there to be a structure and a process in being human and in doing human, and yet not being able to replicate the same schema and apply it to all man that breathe and operate under the said sky, under the great table. There's a harmony, humanly accessible yet humanly impenetrable, that is at ether. The design, I cannot predict, though as the course of my life has happened, so have I learned about the workings of the design, where the ideas go, where the magnitudes fit and scales weigh naught.

When a piano is being played, I wonder what the undersides of the keys would look like. When a finger is pressed down upon a key and the design of the piano function so as to produce an expectant sound, the pressed white piece of painted wood looks different from under. I am imagining the set of keys on a piano, being played, but being seen from underneath. The force that weighs down to formulate sound, then manifests to the eye as a pull. I can see the keys being pulled, strings attached to them, strings that have on them somewhere a key, a key that rings when the string is tugged.

The same goes for a man. He is somebody you know, because now you have imagined him and fashioned him in an image. Perhaps he is indeterminate, unspecific, but he is recognisable. You know him. He's watching you imagine him. He's watching you look at him to give him eyes. He's watching you clothe him to give him contours. He's watching you decide facial features, even if you don't see his pupils or if you don't imagine eyelids. He doesn't say anything, except right now he is talking in your voice, and saying what you are thinking, and wishing to be where you want to be, even if you cannot, with words, say. He knows, even if you don't know you know. But you know, really. He's a man you made up in your image, as you.

From underneath, he is a body, an imagining, a carrier of things that when attention is upon-placed, it forms – instantly. Whatever he is, you want him to be because you want you to be. From underneath, he is a simple man, of flesh that doesn't exist but of flesh that you feel as your own. You have made him yours. You have given him life as life was given you, and upon the life that you are does he live, as upon life itself do you. From underneath, you notice that I am drawing parallels. Layers, whether they be of paint in the sky to delineate the different atmospheres, or layers of clothing to warm on a cold day, a man. There is only one layer we see. The closest to our eyes, our heads, our chest and flesh. Yet there is more, and it all seems to fade into an obscurity, a blob of when-where that fashions itself as a humanoid when we imagine it, but it seems to be something else prior, or rather, nothing but else.

Beneath the form, there is the gap, the nebulose, the capitalisable else. That, is fascinating. Because there is potential for anything, anything that can be narrowed down to be a something, and out of it emerges something and then disappears after. This movement – creation – that holds our attention. The wave in the sea, tiding over the sky, covering it in liquid, and then, retreating, leaving imprints, soon to be gone. There is the man. There you are and there I am, in the sky, waving.