inferiority

excerpts from those who leave and those who stay by elena ferrante

he said only:
"it was predictable that it would end like this."
"why?"
"you remember when i told you that lina scared me?"
"yes."
"it wasn't fear, i understood much later."
"what was it?"
"estrangement and belonging, an effect of distance and closeness at the same time."
"meaning what?"
"it's hard to say: you and i became friends immediately, you i love. with her that always seemed impossible. there was something tremendous about her that made me want to go down on my knees and confess my most secret thoughts."
i said ironically: "great, an almost religious experience."
he remained serious: "no, only an admission of inferiority. but when she helped me study, that was great, yes. she would read the textbook and immediately understand it, then she'd summarize it for me in a simple way. there have been, and still are today, moments when i think: if i had been born a woman i would have wanted to be like her. in fact, in the carracci family we were both alien bodies, neither she nor i could endure. so her faults never mattered to me, i always felt on her side."

*                          *                          *

it happened that around that time mariarosa came to florence to present the book of a university colleague of hers on the madonna del parto. pietro swore he wouldn't miss it, but at the last minute he made an excuse and hid somewhere. my sister-in-law arrived by car, alone this time, a bit tired but affectionate as always and loaded with presents for dede and elsa. she never mentioned my aborted novel, even though adele had surely told her about it. she talked volubly about trips she'd taken, about books, with her usual enthusiasm. she pursued energetically the many novelties of the planet. she would assert one thing, get tired of it, go on to another that a little earlier, out of distraction, blindness, she had rejected. when she spoke about her colleague's book, she immediately gained the admiration of the art historians in the audience. and the evening would have run smoothly along the usual academic tracks if at a certain point, with an abrupt swerve, she hadn't uttered remarks, occasionally vulgar, of this type: children shouldn't be given to any father, least of all god the father, children should be given to themselves; the moment has arrived to study as women and not as men; behind every discipline is the penis and when the penis feels impotent it resorts to the iron bar, the police, the prisons, the army, the concentration camps; and if you don't submit, if, rather, you continue to turn everything upside down, then comes slaughter. shouts of discontent, of agreement: at the end she was surrounded by a dense crowd of women. she called me over with welcoming gestures, proudly showed off dede and elsa to her florentine friends, said nice things about me. some remembered my book, but i avoided it, as if i hadn't written it. the evening was nice, and brought an invitation, from a small, varied group of girls and adult women, to go to the house of one of them, once a week to talk -- they said -- about us.

mariarosa's provocative remarks and the invitation of her friends led me to fish out from under a pile of books those pamphlets adele had given me long before. i carried them around in my purse, i read them outside, under the gray sky of late winter. first, intrigued by the title, i read an essay entitled we spit on hegel. i read it while elsa slept in her carriage and dede, in coat, scarf, and woolen hat, talked to her doll in a low voice. every sentence struck me, every word, and above all the bold freedom of thought. i forcefully underlined many of the sentences, i made exclamation points, vertical strokes. spit on hegel. spit on the culture of men, spit on marx, on engels, on lenin. and on historical materialism. and on freud. and on psychoanalysis and penis envy. and on marriage, on family. and on nazism, on stalinism, on terrorism. and on war. and on the class struggle. and on the dictatorship of the proletariat. and on socialism. and on communism. and on the trap of equality. and on all the manifestations of patriarchal culture. and on all its institutional forms. resist the waste of female intelligence. deculturate. disacculturate, starting with maternity, don't give children to anyone. get rid of the master-slave dialectic. rip inferiority from our brains. restore women to themselves. don't create antitheses. move on another plane in the name of one's own difference. the university doesn't free women but completes their repression. against wisdom. while men devote themselves to undertakings in space, life for women on this planet has yet to begin. woman is the other face of the earth. woman is the unpredictable subject. free oneself from subjection here, now, in this present. the author of those pages was called carla lonzi. how is it possible, i wondered, that a woman knows how to think like that. i worked so hard on books, but i endured them, i never actually used them, i never turned them against themselves. this is thinking. this is thinking against. i -- after so much exertion -- don't know how to think. nor does mariarosa: she's read pages and pages, and she rearranges them with flair, putting on a show. that's it. lila, on the other hand, knows. it's her nature. if she had studied, she would know how to think like this.

that idea became insistent. everything i read in that period ultimately drew lila in, one way or another. i had come upon a female model of thinking that, given the obvious differences, provoked in me the same admiration, the same sense of inferiority that i felt toward her. not only that: i read thinking of her, of fragments of her life, of the sentences she would agree with, of those she would have rejected. afterward, impelled by that reading, i often joined the group of mariarosa's friends, but it wasn't easy: dede asked me continuously when we were leaving, elsa would suddenly let out cries of joy. but it wasn't just my daughters who were the problem. it was that there i found only women who, resembling me, couldn't help me. i was bored when the discussion became a sort of inelegant summary of what i already knew. and it seemed to me i knew well enough what it meant to be born female, i wasn't interested in the work of consciousness-raising. and i had no intention of speaking in public about my relationship with pietro, or with men in general, to provide testimony about what men are, of every class and of every age. and no one knew better than i did what it meant to make your own head masculine so that it would be accepted by the culture of men; i had done it, i was doing it. furthermore i remained completely outside the tensions, the explosions of jealousy, the authoritarian tones, weak, submissive voices, intellectual hierarchies, struggles for primacy in the group that ended in desperate tears. but there was one new fact, which naturally led me to lila. i was fascinated by the way people talked, confronted each other -- explicit to the point of being disagreeable. i didn't like the amenability that yielded to gossip: i had known enough of that since childhood. what seduced me instead was an urge for authenticity that i had never felt and that perhaps was not in my nature. i never said a single word, in that circle, that was equal to that urgency. but i felt that i should do something like that with lila, examine our connection with the same inflexibility, that we should tell each other fully what we had been silent about, starting perhaps from the unaccustomed lament for my mistaken book.

that need was so strong that i imagined going to naples with the children for a while, or asking her to come to me with gennaro, or to write to each other. i talked about it with her once on the phone but it was a fiasco. i told her about the books by women i was reading, about the group i went to . she listened but then she laughed at titles like the clitoral woman and the vaginal woman, and did her best to be vulgar: what the fuck are you talking about, lenu, pleasure, pussy, we've got plenty of problems here already, you're crazy. she wanted to prove that she didn't have the tools to put into words the things that interested me. and in the end she was scornful, she said: work, do the nice things you have to do, don't waste time. she got angry. evidently it's not the right moment, i thought, i'll try again later on. but i never found the time or the courage to try again. i concluded that first of all i had to understand better what i was. investigate my nature as a woman. i had been excessive, i had striven to give myself male capacities. i thought i had to know everything, be concerned with everything. what did i care about politics, about struggles. i wanted to make a good impression on men, be at their level. at the level of what, of their reason, most unreasonable. such persistence in memorizing fashionable jargon, wasted effort. i had been conditioned by my education, which had shaped my mind, my voice. to what secret pacts with myself had i consented, just to excel. and now, after the hard work of learning, what must i unlearn. also, i had been forced by the powerful presence of lila to imagine myself as i was not. i was added to her, and i felt mutilated as soon as i removed myself. not an idea, without lila. not a thought i trusted without the support of her thoughts. not an image. i had to accept myself outside of her. the gist was that. accept that i was an average person. what should i do. try again to write. maybe i didn't have the passion, i merely limited myself to carrying out a task. so don't write anymore. find some job. or act the lady, as my mother said. shut myself up in the family. or turn everything upside down. house. children. husband.

    *                 *                 *

on one of those occasions i told her about my relationship with franco in the days of the normale, and what he had meant to me. i'm grateful to him, i said, i learned so much from him, and i'm sorry that he now treats me and the children coldly. i thought about it for a moment, and continued: maybe there's something mistaken in this desire men have to instruct us; i was young at the time, and i didn't realize that in his wish to transform me was the proof that he didn't like me as i was, he wanted me to be different, or, rather, he didn't want just a woman, he wanted the woman he imagined he himself would be if he were a woman. for franco, i said, i was an opportunity for him to expand into the feminine, to take possession of it: i constituted the proof of his omnipotence, the demonstration that he knew how to be not only a man in the right way but also a woman. and today when he no longer senses me as part of himself, he feels betrayed.

*                       *                      *

. . . i was signora airota, elena airota, a woman depressed by submissiveness who nevertheless, urged by her sister-in-law but also in order to fight discouragement, had begun to study almost in secret the invention of woman by men, mixing the ancient and modern worlds. i didn't have an objective; only to be able to say to mariarosa, to my mother-in-law, to this or that acquaintance: i'm working.

and so i pushed on, in my speculations, from the first and second biblical creations to defoe-flanders, flaubert-bovary, tolstoy-karenina, la derniere mode, rose selavy, and beyond, and still further, in a frenzy of revelation. slowly i began to feel some satisfaction. i discovered everywhere female automatons created by men. there was nothing of ourselves, and the little there was that rose up in protest immediately became material for their manufacturing.

insignificance

from remnants of the first earth by ray a. young bear

"in an earthly realm where the forces of nature are infinitely more powerful than human beings, personal and collective insignificance is a given. in our relatively compact tribal society, there was equal standing among everyone other than the chieftain hierarchy. in the ancien regime our people hunted, fished, gathered food, planted seeds, and harvested crops together, making everyone interdependent.

this philosophical stance of insignificance was reflected in the journals. preceding each passage my grandfathers wrote were such disclaimers: 'now, at this very moment, i will be forthright and say that i do not know much, that i am not exceedingly knowledgeable, but this is what i have been told: whatever you see, you will document that fact, for it will serve as a point from which present and future black eagle childs will have an unobstructed view of our life. this i have done in the same way my other grandfathers did. . . .'"

"it is true what leslie silko says: that if you know how to write, you inevitably deal with those who once lived -- by yourself.

a human presence is forever. even luciano's. even if he didn't quite die. whether in the act of storytelling or fond remembrances. the mere virtue of being alive, permeable and free, rang throughout the physical totality of the person who was luciano bearchild. he sought and was able to experience new ways to see things, to live them and not be complacent."

"listening to grandmother's pleas for william to awaken, i felt the welling of sadness within me. in a tribal society that was historically burdened with obstacles, suppression of emotion became an art form. to cry over the departed was to inflict misery upon their 'shadows.' in death there was a deep-rooted fear that personal grief could bridge the world of the real and the nonreal. whatever our affliction - physical pain, bereavement, sheer loneliness, or embarrassment - being ostentatious was not part of our demeanor."

"edgar bearchild used to preface and summarize stories by saying: 'ma ni tta-i ni-e na ska ki-a ji mo ni. in this direction does the story fall.' bearchild used this phrase to an obsessive degree for any information presented. in this direction being the disclaimer for words spoken in perhaps an unfavorable context, does the story fall being inevitability."

"keep this in mind: to have every facet of life work to one's advantage was seen not as the glorious result of unbounded determination but as the workings of evil. this was - and even today is - the tribal community's mind-set. illiteracy was shared. poverty was blood-ingrained, and like the harmony that held the clans together, having little was inherited. anything that tore through the delicate netting was regrettable, like suicidal indians or those who chose urban relocation, coming home for their own funerals. what a pity! was whispered through cupped hands to respectful, listening ears. a life misled was lamented over sweet rolls and coffee, but luciano's success with money and white women was deemed unnatural.

suffering and bad luck were shared. equally - like commodity surplus foods. luciano's fortune benefited his immediate family and himself. . . amazingly, after luciano's mysterious disappearance, many spoke of him in respectful terms. those who had been jealous enough to become enemies recanted statements he had been an extraterrestrial all along and took part in the search for him."

solitary mind

quotes from be an island by ayya khema

"when we can abandon distracting thoughts while meditating on the breath, we can use the same skill to protect our mind at all times. the more we learn to shut our mind-door to the negativities that disturb our inner peace, the easier our life becomes. peace of mind is not indifference. recognizing and letting go is not suppression. a peaceful mind is a compassionate mind.
[suffering] is self-made and self-perpetuated. if we are sincere in wanting to get rid of it, we have to watch the mind carefully. we have to gain insight into what is really happening within. what triggers us? how do we react? there are innumerable triggers, but only two reactions. one is equanimity, the other craving."

"if there is such a thing as the deathless, and if we recognize that birth is [suffering], then what is left to us other than the path toward the deathless? it is not enough to try meditation tentatively, hoping for some bliss and to learn some of the buddha's teaching to improve our interaction with others. it is enough only when the heart says, 'there are no other choices but to attain the deathless.'
one certain way of reaching that conviction is having sufficient [suffering]. of course, nobody would wish that for anyone else, but the experience of much suffering is often enough to turn the tide. there are many stories from the buddha's lifetime when women in particular were experiencing so much [suffering], losing their families and loved ones, that they had no other choices left. in our society there may be too many alternatives left. . . if we look at any of the alternatives we can conjure up, we recognize each one of them as a sense contact - which is always short-lived. unless that becomes entirely clear, our spiritual growth will always be shaky."

"we need courage to choose the way of the dhamma. if we take the path leading out of [suffering], we have to leave a lot of attachments and support systems behind. that takes courage. we discard much of that which we once believed to bring fulfillment and happiness. we need courage to break with that and begin to stand alone. . . we begin to loosen our attachments, our clinging and belonging. we recognize beyond any doubt that there is nothing more important to be done than treading the path to enlightenment. then all our energies and priorities are geared to this objective."

"a malleable mind is pliable, moves freely, and embraces everything. whenever we notice some inner change in ourselves, we need to recollect it repeatedly so as to make it second nature. one such change is becoming less concerned with comforts, belongings, ideas, hopes, and wishes. we become more and more concerned with what we can give, how we can grow, and whether we are making wholesome karma. investigating further, we can try letting go of being a separate person for a moment and instead feeling part of all that exists. as long as we are caught within the barrier of our own minds and bodies, we cannot find true happiness. . .
giving oneself completely is difficult for most of us, because we think we are losing ourselves. actually we gain everything -- all spiritual teachings are agreed on that. whatever we use as our personal identity constitutes our prison. letting go is freedom. when we do experience a moment of letting go, we mistakenly think that it was due to a certain situation or person. but in reality we experience freedom whenever we let go of what we're clinging to. giving in and giving up are tiny lights at the end of the tunnel that let us know freedom is possible."

"solitude can be fully experienced only when there is inner peace. otherwise loneliness pushes us to remedy feelings of emptiness and loss. 'where is everybody? what can i do without some companionship? i must discuss my problems.' mindfulness is able to take care of all that, because it arises in the present moment and has nothing to do with the future or past. it keeps us totally occupied and saves us from making mistakes. the greater our mindfulness, the fewer the mistakes. errors on the mundane level have repercussions for the spiritual path. when our lack of mindfulness leads us to inflict [suffering] on ourselves, we will try again and again to find someone who is to blame or someone who can distract us.
ideal solitude arises when a person can be alone or with others and retain the same inner calm, not getting caught in someone else's difficulties. we may respond in an appropriate manner, but we are not affected. we all have our own inner life, but we get to know it well only when the mind stops chattering and we can attend to our inner feelings. once we have seen what is happening inside of us, we will want to change some of it. . . our inner stress and lack of peace push us to find someone who will remove our [suffering], but only we can do it.
the solitary mind can have profound and original thoughts, whereas a dependent mind thinks in cliches because it wants approval. a worldly mind that understands only superficialities cannot grasp the profundity of the buddha's teaching."

"depth of understanding makes release from suffering possible. when we go deeper and deeper and find no core, we learn to let go of even deep-seated attachments. whether what we find within us is pure and commendable or impure and unpleasant makes no difference. all mental states that we own and cherish keep us in duality, in midair, in insecurity, and cannot bring an end to suffering. . .
even if we agree with the buddha's words and find them plausible, without the certainty of personal experience they will be of limited assistance. to have direct knowledge, we must sink like a stone, untied to anything, down to the bottom of all our obstructions. to see the truth, we need a powerful mind, a weighty mind. as long as the mind is interested in petty concerns, it will not have sufficient weight to attain deep understanding."

who is responsible for what

quotes from the dance of anger by harriet lerner

"anger is inevitable when we submit to unfair circumstances and when we protect another person at our own expense."

"feeling fuzzy-headed, inarticulate, and not so smart are common reactions experienced by women as we struggle to take a stand on our own behalf. it is not just anger and fighting that we learn to fear; we avoid asking precise questions and making clear statements when we unconsciously suspect that doing so would expose our differences, make the other person feel uncomfortable, and leave us standing alone."

"karen's emotional reaction to her boss's criticism obscured her thinking about what she wanted to ask and what she wanted to say. . . her tears and her willingness to let her boss play the role of advisor and confidant were, in part, her unconscious way of reinstating the status quo and apologizing for the 'separateness' inherent in her initial position of disagreement. . . karen had deep-seated fears of her own omnipotent destructiveness and the vulnerability of men. our very definitions of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' are based on the notion that women must function as nonthreatening helpmates and ego builders to men lest men feel castrated and weakened. . . karen was afraid of transforming her anger into concise statements of her thoughts and feelings lest she evoke that disturbing sense of separateness and aloneness that we experience when we make our differences known and encourage others to do the same. . . karen had a long-standing pattern of attempting to restore the togetherness of her relationships by crying, criticizing herself, becoming confused, or prematurely making peace. at the heart of the problem was the fact that karen needed to work harder at the task of clarifying her separateness and independence within her first family."

"more often, and more crucially, separation anxiety is based on an underlying discomfort with separateness and individuality that has its roots in our early family experience, where the unspoken expectation may have been that we keep a lid on our expressions of self. daughters are especially sensitive to such demands and may become far more skilled at protecting the relational 'we' than asserting the autonomous 'i.'"

 "learning to use our anger effectively requires some letting go -- letting go of blaming that other person whom we see as causing our problems and failing to provide for our happiness; letting go of the notion that it is our job to change other people or tell them how they should think, feel, behave. yet, this does not mean that we passively accept or go along with any behavior. in fact, a 'live-and-let-live' attitude can signal a de-selfed position, if we fail to clarify what is and is not acceptable or desirable to us in a relationship. the main issue is how we clarify our position."

"we are responsible for our own behavior. but we are not responsible for other people's reactions; nor are they responsible for ours. women often learn to reverse this order of things: we put our energy into taking responsibility for other people's feelings, thoughts, and behavior and hand over to others responsibility for our own."

"why is the question 'who is responsible for what?' such a puzzle for women? women in particular have been discouraged from taking responsibility for solving our own problems, determining our own choices, and taking control of the quality and direction of our own lives. as we learn to relinquish responsibility for the self, we are prone to blame others for failing to fill up our emptiness or provide for our happiness -- which is not their job. at the same time, however, we may feel responsible for just about everything that goes on around us. we are quick to be blamed for other people's problems and pain and quick to accept the verdict of guilty. we also, in the process, develop the belief that we can avert problems if only we try hard enough."

"the emotional rescuers of the world can have a terribly difficult time allowing others just to sit with their feelings and learn to handle them. . . when we do not put our primary emotional energy into solving our own problems, we take on other people's problems as our own. . . the problem arises when we are excessively reactive to other people's problems, when we assume responsibility for things that we are not responsible for, and when we attempt to control things that are not in our control. when we overfunction for another individual, we end up very angry, and in the process, we facilitate the growth of no one."

this hand that writes

excerpt from faces in the crowd by valeria luiselli

in winter there were windstorms. but i used to wear miniskirts because i was young. i wrote letters to my acquaintances telling them about my rambles, describing my legs swathed in gray tights, my body wrapped in a red coat with deep pockets. i wrote letters about the cold wind that caressed those legs, compared the freezing air to the bristle of a badly shaved chin, as if the air and a pair of gray legs walking along streets were literary material. when a person has lived alone for a long time, the only way to confirm that they still exist is to express activities and things in an easily shared syntax: this face, these bones that walk, this mouth, this hand that writes.

now i write at night, when the two children are asleep and it's acceptable to smoke, drink, and let drafts in. before, i used to write all the time, at any hour, because my body belonged to me. my legs were long, strong, and slim. it was right to offer them: to whomever, to writing.

weakness

excerpts from the story of a new name by elena ferrante

but he promptly shifted onto the only terrain that seemed to justify our meeting. he said that he was glad to see me, all he could talk about with his friend was soccer and exam subjects. he praised me. professor galiani perceived it, he said, you're the only girl in the school who has any curiosity about things that aren't useful for exams and grades. he started to speak about serious subjects, we resorted immediately to a fine, impassioned italian in which we knew we excelled. he started off with the problem of violence. he mentioned a peace demonstration in cortona and related it skillfully to the beating that had taken place in a piazza in turin. he said he wanted to understand more about the link between immigration and industry. i agreed, but what did i know about those things? nothing. nino realized it, and he told me in great detail about an uprising of young southerners and the harshness with which the police had repressed them. "they call them napoli, they call them moroccans, they call them fascists, provocateurs, anarcho-syndicalists. but really they are boys whom no institution cares about, so neglected that when they get angry they destroy everything." searching for something to say that would please him, i ventured, "if you don't have a solid knowledge of the problems and if you don't find lasting solutions, then naturally violence breaks out. but the people who rebel aren't to blame. it's the ones who don't know how to govern." he gave me an admiring look, and said, "that's exactly what i think."

i was really pleased. i felt encouraged and cautiously went on to some reflections on how to reconcile individuality and universality, drawing on rousseau and other memories of the readings imposed by professor galiani. then i asked, "have you read federico chabod?"

i mentioned that name because he was the author of the book on the idea of nationhood that i had read a few pages of. i didn't know anything else, but at school i had learned to give the impression that i knew a lot. have you read federico chabod? it was the only moment when nino seemed to be annoyed. i realized that he didn't know who chabod was and from that i got an electrifying sensation of fullness. i began to summarize the little i had learned, but i quickly realized that to know, to compulsively display what he knew, was his point of strength and at the same time his weakness. he felt strong if he took the lead and weak if he lacked words. he darkened, in fact he stopped me almost immediately. he sidetracked the conversation, he started talking about the regions, about how urgent it was to get them approved, about autonomy and decentralization, about economic planning on a regional basis, all things i had never heard a word about. no chabod, then: i left him the field. and i liked to hear him talk, read the passion in his face. his eyes brightened when he was excited.

            *                         *                               *

who knows if michele solara had kept to himself what he had seen. who knows if everything was going smoothly. who knows if nunzia was already asleep in the house on the road in cuotto or was trying to calm her son-in-law who had arrived unexpectedly on the last boat, hadn't found his wife and was furious. who knows if lila had telephoned her husband and, reassured that he was in naples, far away, in the apartment in the new neighborhood, was now in bed with nino, without fear, a secret couple, a couple intent on enjoying the night. everything in the world was in precarious balance, pure risk, and those who didn't agree to take the risk wasted away in a corner, without getting to know life. i understood suddenly why i hadn't had nino, why lila had had him. i wasn't capable of entrusting myself to true feelings. i didn't know how to be drawn beyond the limits. i didn't possess that emotional power that had driven lila to do all she could to enjoy that day and that night. i stayed behind, waiting. she, on the other hand, seized things, truly wanted them, was passionate about them, played for all or nothing, and wasn't afraid of contempt, mockery, spitting, beatings. she deserved nino, in other words, because she thought that to love him meant to try to have him, not to hope that he would want her.

          *                        *                    *

unlike pietro, his father, mother, and sister conversed on a wide variety of subjects. at lunch, in the restaurant of the hotel where they were staying, professor airota and his daughter had, for example, affectionate skirmishes on political subjects that i had heard about from pasquale, from nino, and from franco but of whose substance i knew almost nothing. arguments like: you've been trapped by inter-class collaboration; you call it a trap, i call it mediation; mediation in which the christian democrats always and only win; the politics of the center left is difficult; if it's difficult, go back to being socialists; you're not reforming a thing; in our place what would you do; revolution, revolution, and revolution; revolution is taking italy out of the middle ages, without us socialists in the government, the students who talk about sex at school would be in jail and so would those who distribute pacifist leaflets; i want to see how you'd manage with the atlantic pact; we were always against the war and against all imperialism; you govern with the christian democrats, but will you stay anti-american?

like that, a swift back and forth: a polemical exercise that they both obviously enjoyed, maybe a friendly habit of long standing. i recognized in them, father and daughter, what i had never had and, i now knew, would always lack. what was it? i wasn't able to say precisely: the training, perhaps, to feel that the questions of the world were deeply connected to me; the capacity to feel them as crucial and not purely as information to display at an exam, in view of a good grade; a mental conformation that didn't reduce everything to my own individual battle, to the effort to be successful. mariarosa was kind, and so was her father; their tones were controlled, without a trace of the verbal excesses of armando, professor galiani's son, or of nino; and yet they injected warmth into political formulas that on other occasions had seemed to me cold, remote, to be used only in an attempt not to make a bad impression. following each other in rapid succession, they moved on, without interruption, to the bombing of north vietnam, to the student revolts on various campuses, to the many breeding grounds of anti-imperialist struggle in latin america and africa. and the daughter now seemed to be more up to date than the father. how many things mariarosa knew, she talked as if she had first-hand information, so that airota at a certain point looked at his wife ironically, and adele said to her, "you're the only one who hasn't chosen a dessert yet."

"i'll have chocolate cake," she said, breaking off with a graceful frown.

i looked at her in admiration. she drove a car, lived in milan, taught at the university, stood up to her father without resentment. i, instead: i was frightened by the idea of opening my mouth, and, at the same time, humiliated by staying silent. i couldn't contain myself, i said hyperbolically, "the americans, after hiroshima and nagasaki, should be brought to trial for crimes against humanity."

silence. the whole family looked at me. mariarosa exclaimed bravo!, she took my hand, shook it. i felt encouraged and immediately bubbled over with words, scraps of old phrases memorized at various times. i talked about planning and rationalization, the socialist-christian democratic precipice, about neocapitalism, about organizational structures, about africa, asia, primary school, piaget, collusion of the police and the courts, fascist rot in every manifestation of the state. i was muddled, breathless. my heart was pounding, i forgot who i was with and where i was. yet i felt around me an atmosphere of increasing approval, and i was happy to have expressed myself, i seemed to have made a good impression. i was also glad that no one in that nice little family had asked me, as happened frequently, where i came from, what my father did, and my mother. i was i, i , i.

          *                       *                        *

i was working night and day on my thesis, i harassed pietro, reading aloud to him what i had written. he was kind, he shook his head, he fished in his memory of virgil and other authors for passages that might be useful to me. i noted down every word he uttered, i worked hard, but in a bad mood. i went back and forth between two feelings. i sought help and it humiliated me to ask for it, i was grateful and at the same time hostile, in particular i hated that he did his best not to let his generosity weigh on me. what caused me the greatest anxiety was to find myself -- together with him, before him, after him -- submitting my research to the assistant professor who was following the progress of both of us, a man of around forty, earnest, attentive, sometimes even sociable. i saw that pietro was treated as if he already had a professorship, i as a normal brilliant student. often i decided not to talk to the teacher, out of rage, out of pride, out of fear of having to be aware of my constitutional inferiority. i have to do better than pietro, i thought, he knows so many more things than i do, but he's gray, he has no imagination. his way of proceeding, the way that he gently tried to suggest to me, was too cautious. so i undid my work, i started again, i pursued an idea that seemed to me original. when i returned to the professor i was listened to, yes, i was praised, but without seriousness, as if my struggle were only a game well played. i soon grasped that pietro airota had a future and i didn't.

in aporia

by akilah oliver, from a toast in the house of friends

"i realized everything i was doing must have been death. it was christmas or labor day -- a holiday -- and every time you turned on the radio they said something like 'four million' or 'going to die.'"
-andy warhol

i'm trying on egos, [a justification for the planet's continuance]. oh
hello transgressor, you've come to collect utilitarian debts, humbling
narrative space. give me a condition and wheatgrass,

i his body is disintegrating, i his body is ossification. death my habit
radius, yeah yeah.
i his body can't refuse the summons. i can't get out
this fucking room. tell me something different about torture
dear trickster.

tell me about the lightness my mother told me to pick the one i love the best
how it signals everything i ever wish to believe true just holy on my ship.
i jump all over this house. this is it [what i thought is thought only,
nothing more deceptive than]:
i his body keeps thinking someone will come along, touch me.
as like human. or lima bean.

i'm cradling you to my breast, you are looking out. a little wooden lion
you & peter carve on bluff street is quieting across your cheekbone. not
at all like the kind of terror found in sleep, on trembling grounds.

it is yesterday now. i have not had a chance to dance in this century.
tonight i shall kill someone,
a condition to remember sunday mornings.

to think of lives as repetitions [rather than singular serial incarnations].
to understand your death is as exacerbating as trying to figure out why
as schoolchildren in mid-nineteen-sixties southern california we
performed reflexive motions:
cutting out lace snowflakes, reading dick and jane search for their
missing mittens,
imagining snow.

and this too, fiction. the book i would want to right.
the restored fallen, heroic.

did you expect a different grace from the world? or upon exit?

i'm working on "tough." they think i am already. all ready.

who is the dead person? is "i'm sorry" real to a dead person?
browning grass. my hands on this table. a contentious century.
a place to pay rent. redemptive moments.

am i now the dead person?
dead person, dead person, will you partake in my persimmon feast?

the body inside the body astounds, confesses sins of the funhouse.

i too have admired the people of this planet.
their frilly, ordered intellects.
the use they've made of cardamom,
radiation as well. how they've pasteurized milk, loaned surnames to stars,
captured tribes, diseases, streets, and ideas too.

if you're hooked

quotes from how to meditate by pema chodron

“the more we see this kind of pattern and don’t go on the downward cycle, the more our confidence grows in our capacity to awaken. as we expand our confidence in the workability of our situation, we begin to see that we are not victims of our habitual patterns. it can definitely feel like we are victims of our habitual patterns; they have a very sneaky way of getting the better of us. but the path of meditation addresses these patterns very directly, and it begins to unwind this whole sense of being imprisoned by our own mind.

the mind is the source of all suffering, and it is also the source of all happiness. think about that. in fact, you can contemplate this for the rest of your life. when something comes up in your life that causes you dissatisfaction, or triggers habitual patterns and reactivity, or makes you angry, lonely, and jealous, ask yourself: are these emotions happening because of outer circumstances? are they completely dependent on outer circumstances?

the path of meditation says that we have to work with our mind, and that if we do work with our mind, the outer circumstances become workable. things that used to irritate and bother us or that trigger our reactivity and habitual patterns begin to dissolve. so whenever you find yourself caught in an emotional attack, you have to ask yourself: ‘how much of this is really happening on the outside, and how much of this is my mind?’. . .

the guideline is this: if you’re hooked, then you need to work on your side of the situation, no matter how outrageous and unjust the outer circumstance might seem. if you’re hooked, this is a clue that you have some work to do -- and you, only you, can call yourself back. this is the basic attitude of meditation.”

“criticalness is an obstacle to meditation, and harshness is an obstacle to awakening. this tendency to be hard on ourselves does not come from the buddha nature, the basic goodness within all of us; it comes from the ego and our conditioning. we all have the seeds of this basic goodness within us -- we only have to nourish them. nourishing the basic goodness within includes not judging ourselves for all the wild thinking that takes place in our mind. we can’t control how many thoughts we’re going to have. and we can’t control what the next thought is going to be. as you practice, try to be faithful to the instruction with a gentle attitude. we train in attention, but it’s friendly attention. we train in labeling, but it’s friendly labeling.”

“as you spend more days and weeks with your commitment to practice, it might seem that your mind wanders even more. many people, even seasoned meditators, say, ‘i’m thinking more than i ever did before!’ they feel like their distractedness and thinking are getting worse, rather than better. the fact is that before you started meditating and trying to develop mindfulness, you weren’t aware of how many thoughts you have. now you are, and that’s why there appears to be more of them.”

“trungpa rinpoche used to say that this kind of experience is very good because it humbles us. he said, ‘our minds are great teachers because we have just enough growing awareness and alertness, or increasing kindness, to encourage ourselves.’ and as he pointed out, we can even get very arrogant about that. in other words, our humanity, this discursiveness and this inability to completely overcome the wild and drowsy mind, keeps us in balance.

the third word i’d like you to hold when it comes to your thoughts is ‘humor.’ gentleness, patience, and a sense of humor. have a sense of humor about the fact that your mind is like a wild monkey. in his book wake up to your life, ken mcleod has a great quote from the theravada meditation master henepola gunaratana. he says, ‘somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless. no problem. you are not crazier than you were yesterday. it has always been this way and you never noticed.’ our thoughts are like the weather -- they’re just passing through. in our practice, there’s no need to cling to them, no need to see them as totally solid. they are thoughts, after all; they’re not the present moment. let them pass through the big sky of your mind.”  

mere unbeing

excerpts from housekeeping by marilynne robinson

"well, that's fine," sylvie said. "i'm glad to have a chance to talk to you. you're so quiet, it's hard to know what you think." sylvie had stood up, and we began to walk toward home.

"i suppose i don't know what i think." this confession embarrassed me. it was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that i often seemed invisible -- incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. it seemed to me that i made no impact on the world, and that in exchange i was privileged to watch it unawares. but my allusion to this feeling of ghostliness sounded peculiar, and sweat started all over my body, convicting me on the spot of gross corporeality.

"well, maybe that will change," sylvie said. we walked a while without speaking. "maybe it won't." i dropped a step behind and watched her face. she always spoke to me in the voice of an adult dispensing wisdom. i wanted to ask her if she knew what she thought, and if so, what the experience of that sort of knowledge was like, and if not, whether she, too, felt ghostly, as i imagined she must. i waited for sylvie to say, "you're like me." i thought she might say, "you're like your mother." i feared and suspected that sylvie and i were of a kind, and waited for her to claim me, but she would not.

*          *           *

the quilt was warm and soft around me arms and shoulders and my ears. i fell asleep where i sat, with the cup of brimstone tea in my lap, held carefully in both hands so as not to spill. sleep made one sensation of the heat in my palms and the sugar on my tongue. i slept precariously upright, aware of my bare feet, hearing the wood in the stove crackle. more words passed between sylvie and lucille, but i could not make them out. it seemed to me that whatever lucille said, sylvie sang back to her, but that was dreaming.

so this is all death is, i thought. sylvie and lucille do not notice, or perhaps they do not object. sylvie, in fact, brought the coffeepot and warmed the cup in my hands, and arranged the quilt, which had slid from my shoulder a little. i was surprised and touched by her solicitude. she knows, i thought, and i felt like laughing. sylvie is sitting beside the stove, flipping through old magazines, waiting for my mother. i began listening for the sound of the door opening, but after a very long time my head fell sharply to one side and i could not lift it up again. then i realized that my mouth was open. all this time the room was filling with strangers, and there was no way for me to tell sylvie that the tea had tipped out of my hands and wet my lap. i knew that my decay, now obvious and accelerating, should somehow be concealed for decency's sake, but sylvie would not look up from her magazine. i began to hope for oblivion, and then i rolled out of my chair.

sylvie looked up from her magazine. "did you have a good sleep?" she asked.

"all right," i said. i picked up the cup and brushed at the dampness of my pant legs.

"sleep is best when you're really tired," she said. "you don't just sleep. you die."

*         *            *

of my conception i know only what you know of yours. it occurred in darkness and i was unconsenting. i (and that slenderest word is too gross for the rare thing i was then) walked forever through reachless oblivion, in the mood of one smelling night-blooming flowers, and suddenly -- my ravishers left their traces in me, male and female, and over the months i rounded, grew heavy, until the scandal could no longer be concealed and oblivion expelled me. but this i have in common with all my kind. by some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it. so they seal the door against our returning.

then there is the matter of my mother's abandonment of me. again, this is the common experience. they walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. the only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.

types

from the dance of anger by harriet lerner

PURSUERS

• react to anxiety by seeking greater togetherness in a relationship
• place a high value on talking things out and expressing feelings, and believe others should do the same
• feels rejected and take it personally when someone close to them wants more time and space alone or away from the relationship
• tend to pursue harder and then coldly withdraw when an important person seeks distance
• may negatively label themselves as 'too dependent' or 'too demanding' in a relationship
• tend to criticize their partner as someone who can't handle feelings or tolerate closeness

 DISTANCERS

• seeks emotional distance or physical space when stress is high
• consider themselves to be self-reliant and private persons -- more 'do-it-yourselfers' than help-seekers
• have difficulty showing their needy, vulnerable, and dependent sides
• receive such labels as 'emotionally unavailable,' 'withholding,' 'unable to deal with feelings' from significant others
• manage anxiety in personal relationships by intensifying work-related projects
• may cut off a relationship entirely when things get intense, rather than hanging in and working it out
• opens up most freely when they are not pushed or pursued

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

UNDERFUNCTIONERS

• tend to have several areas where they just can't get organized
• become less competent under stress, thus inviting others to take over
• tend to develop physical or emotional symptoms when stress is high in either the family or the work situation
• may become the focus of family gossip, worry, or concern
• earn such labels as the 'patient,' the 'fragile one,' the 'sick one,' the 'problem,' the 'irresponsible one'
• have difficulty showing their strong, competent side to intimate others

OVERFUNCTIONERS

• know what's best not only for themselves but for others as well
• move in quickly to advise, rescue, and take over when stress hits
• have difficulty staying out and allowing others to struggle with their own problems
• avoid worrying about their own personal goals and problems by focusing on others
• have difficulty sharing their own vulnerable, underfunctioning side, especially with those people who are viewed as having problems
• may be labeled the person who is 'always reliable' or 'always together'

colonist

excerpts from "the resident" by carmen maria machado - from the short story collection her body and other parties


i crossed paths with the others at breakfast, sometimes. one morning, diego told me about the previous day's social engagements-- which i had ignored in favor of lucille's social engagements near my novel's climax -- and in doing so he said a curious word: colonist.

"colonist?" i said.

"we're at an artist colony," he said. "so we're colonists, right? like columbus." he drained his orange juice and stood up from the table.

i suppose he meant it to be funny, but i was horrified. resident had seemed such a rich and appropriate term, an umbrella i would have been content to carry all of my days. but now the word colonist settled down next to me, with teeth. what were we colonizing? each other's space? the wilderness? our own minds? this last thought was a troubling one, even though it was not very different from my conception of being allowed to be a resident in your own mind. resident suggests a door hatch in the front of your brain, propped open to allow for introspection, and when you enter, you are faced with objects that you'd previously forgotten about. "i remember this!" you might say, holding up a small wooden frog, or a floppy rag doll with no face, or a picture book whose sensory impressions flood back to you as you turn the pages -- a toadstool with a wedge missing from its cap; a flurry of luminous autumn leaves; a summer breeze dancing with milkweed. in contrast, colonist sounds monstrous, as if you have kicked down the door hatch of your mind and inside you find a strange family eating supper.

now when i worked, i felt strange around the entrance to my own interiority. was i actually just an invader, bearing smallpox-ridden blankets and lies? what secrets and mysteries lay undiscovered in there?

*           *           *

in my cabin, i tried hard to focus. i stood out on my balcony and strained to see the lake, but i could not. exhausted by the weather, i lay down on the floor. from there, the room changed, utterly. i felt stuck to the ceiling by a force equivalent to, though the opposite of, gravity, and from here i could see the hidden spaces beneath the furniture: a mouse's nest, a stranger's index card, a lone, bone-white button tilted on an axis.

i was reminded, for the umpteenth time, of viktor shklovsky's idea of defamiliarization; of zooming in so close to something, and observing it so slowly, that it begins to warp, and change, and acquire new meaning. when i'd first begun to experience this phenomenon, i'd been too young to understand what it was; certainly too young to consult a reference book. the first time, i lay down on the floor examining the metal-and-rubber foot of our family refrigerator, wreathed in dust and human hair, and from this reference point all other objects began to change. the foot, instead of being insignificant, one of four, et cetera, suddenly became everything: a stoic little home at the base of a large mountain, from which one could see a tiny curl of smoke and glinting, illuminated windows, a home from which a hero would emerge, eventually. every nick on the foot was a balcony or a door. the detritus beneath the fridge became a wrecked, ravaged landscape, the expanse of kitchen tile a rambling kingdom waiting for salvation. this was how my mother found me: staring at the foot of the refrigerator so intensely my eyes were slightly crossed, my body curled up, my lips moving almost imperceptibly.

*         *           *

in the realm of sense and reason it seemed logical for something to make sense for no reason (natural order) or not make sense for some reason (the deliberate design of deception) but it seemed perverse to have things make no sense for no reason. what if you colonize your own mind and when you get inside, the furniture is attached to the ceiling? what if you step inside and when you touch the furniture, you realize it's all just cardboard cutouts and it all collapses beneath the pressure of your finger? what if you get inside and there's no furniture? what if you get inside and it's just you in there, sitting in a chair, rolling figs and eggs around in the basket of your lap and humming a little tune? what if you get inside and there's nothing there, and then the door hatch closes and locks?

what is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it?

what is worse: writing a trope or being one? what about being more than one?

i walked to my cabin for the last time. i finally added my name to the tablet above my desk. C----- M----, i scrawled. resident colonist & colonizing resident & madwoman in her own attic.

i threw my novel notes and laptop into the lake. after the plush splash subsided, i heard the sound of girls, laughing. or maybe it was just the birds.

countermoves

quotes from the dance of anger by harriet lerner

"our anger may be a signal that we are doing more and giving more than we can comfortably do or give. or our anger may warn us that others are doing too much for us, at the expense of our own competence and growth."

"if feeling angry signals a problem, venting anger does not solve it. venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur."

"feelings of depression, low self-esteem, self-betrayal, and even self-hatred are inevitable when we fight but continue to submit to unfair circumstances, when we complain but live in a way that betrays our hopes, values and potentials, or when we find ourselves fulfilling society's stereotype of the bitchy, nagging, bitter, or destructive woman."

"our society cultivates guilt feelings in women such that many of us still feel guilty if we are anything less than an emotional service station to others."

"the negative words and images that depict women who do speak out are more than just cruel sexist stereotypes; they also hint at a painful reality. words like 'nagging,' 'complaining,' and 'bitching' are words of helplessness and powerlessness, which do not imply even the possibility of change. they are words that reflect the 'stuck' position that characterizes our lives when a great deal of emotion is flying around and nothing is really changing."

"it is those closest to us who often have the greatest investment in our staying the same, despite whatever criticisms and complaints they may openly voice."

"de-selfing means that too much of one's self (including one's thoughts, wants, beliefs, and ambitions) is 'negotiable' under pressures from the relationship. . . the partner who is doing the most sacrificing of self stores up the most repressed anger and is especially vulnerable to becoming depressed."

"it is the underfunctioning of one individual that allows for the overfunctioning of the other. . . underfunctioners and overfunctioners provoke and reinforce each other's behavior, so that the seesaw becomes increasingly hard to balance over time. the more [one person] avoids sharing their own weaknesses, neediness, and vulnerability, [the other] may experience and express more than their share. the more [one person] avoids showing their competence and strength, the more [the other] will have an inflated sense of their own. and if the underfunctioning partner starts looking better, the overfunctioning partner will start looking worse."

"whenever one person makes a move to rebalance the seesaw, there is a countermove by the other party."

"we are good at anticipating other people's reactions, and we are experts at protecting others from uncomfortable feelings. this is a highly developed social skill that is all too frequently absent in men. if only we could take this very same skill and redirect it inward in order to become experts on our own selves."

"when the 'togetherness force' is overriding, a lot of energy goes into trying to 'be for' the other person, and trying to make the other person think or behave differently. instead of taking responsibility for our own selves, we tend to feel responsible for the emotional well-being of the other person and hold the other person responsible for ours."

"we all need to have both an 'i' and a 'we' that nourish and give meaning to each other. there is no formula for the 'right' amount of separateness and togetherness for all couples or even for the same couple over time. each member of a couple is constantly monitoring the balance of these two forces, automatically and unconsciously making moves to restore more separateness (when anxiety about fusion sets in) or more togetherness (when anxiety about unrelatedness sets in). the balance of these two forces is constantly in motion in every couple. one common 'solution' or 'division of labor' that couples unconsciously arrange is that [one] will express the wish for 'togetherness'; [the other], the wish for 'separateness.'"

"the dilemma is that we may unconsciously be convinced that our important relationships can survive only if we continue to remain one down. to do better -- to become clearer, to act stronger, to be more separate, to take action on our own behalf -- may be unconsciously equated with a destructive act that will diminish and threaten our partner, who might then retaliate or leave."

"fighting and blaming is sometimes a way both to protest and to protect the status quo when we are not quite ready to make a move in one direction or another."

"most of us want the impossible. we want to control not only our own decisions and choices but also the other person's reactions to them."

"repeating the same old fights protects us from the anxieties we are bound to experience when we make a change. ineffective fighting allows us to stop the clock when our efforts to achieve greater clarity become too threatening. sometimes staying stuck is what we need to do until the time comes when we are confident that it is safe to get unstuck."

"emotional pursuers are persons who reduce their anxiety by sharing feelings and seeking close emotional contact. emotional distancers are persons who reduce their anxiety by intellectualizing and withdrawing. . . what is the common outcome of this classic scenario? after this escalating dance of pursuit and withdrawal proceeds for some time, [the pursuer] goes into what therapists call 'reactive distance.' feeling rejected and fed up, they at last proceed to go about their own business. [the distancer] now has even more space than they are comfortable with, and in time moves closer to the other in the hope of making contact. but it is too late. "where were you when i needed you!" the [pursuer] says angrily. at this point, distancer and pursuer might even reverse their roles for a while.

emotional pursuers protect emotional distancers. by doing the work of expressing the neediness, clingingness, and wish for closeness for both partners, pursuers make it possible for distancers to avoid confronting their own dependency wishes and insecurities. as long as one person is pursuing, the other has the luxury of experiencing a cool independence and a need for space."

miniature secrets

quotes from atonement by ian mcewan

"a taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit. another was a passion for secrets: in a prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint, and here she kept a diary locked by a clasp, and a notebook written in a code of her own invention. in a toy safe opened by six secret numbers she stored letters and postcards. an old tin petty cash box was hidden under a removable floorboard beneath her bed. in the box were treasures that dated back four years, to her ninth birthday when she began collecting: a mutant double acorn, fool's gold, a rainmaking spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel's skull as light as a leaf.

but hidden drawers, lockable diaries and cryptographic systems could not conceal from briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. her wish for a harmonious, organized world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel."

"for this was the point, surely: he would be a better doctor for having read literature. what deep readings his modified sensibility might make of human suffering, of the self-destructive folly or sheer bad luck that drive men toward ill health! birth, death, and frailty in between. rise and fall -- this was the doctor's business, and it was literature's too."

"soon there were only the sounds of steady breathing and snores. beneath him the floor still seemed to list, then switch to the rhythm of a steady march, and once again turner found himself too afflicted by impressions, too fevered, too exhausted to sleep. through the material of his coat he felt for the bundle of her letters. i'll wait for you. come back. the words were not meaningless, but they didn't touch him now. it was clear enough -- one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. waiting. simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. waiting was a heavy word. he felt it pressing down, heavy as a greatcoat. everyone in the cellar was waiting, everyone on the beach. she was waiting, yes, but then what? he tried to make her voice say the words, but it was his own he heard, just below the tread of his heart. he could not even form her face. he forced his thoughts toward the new situation, the one that was supposed to make him happy. the intricacies were lost to him, the urgency had died. briony would change her evidence, she would rewrite the past so that the guilty became the innocent. but what was guilt these days? it was cheap. everyone was guilty, and no one was. no one would be redeemed by a change of evidence, for there weren't enough people, enough paper and pens, enough patience and peace, to take down the statements of all the witnesses and gather in the facts. the witnesses were guilty too. all day we've witnessed each other's crimes. you killed no one today? but how many did you leave to die?"

the three lords

excerpt from cutting through spiritual materialism by chogyam trungpa

the lord of form refers to the neurotic pursuit of physical comfort, security and pleasure. our highly organized and technological society reflects our preoccupation with manipulating physical surroundings so as to shield ourselves from the irritations of the raw, rugged, unpredictable aspects of life. push-button elevators, pre-packaged meat, air conditioning, flush toilets, private funerals, retirement programs, mass production, weather satellites, bulldozers, fluorescent lighting, nine-to-five jobs, television -- all are attempts to create a manageable, safe, predictable, pleasurable world.

the lord of form does not signify the physically rich and secure life-situations we create per se. rather it refers to the neurotic preoccupation that drives us to create them, to try to control nature. it is the ego's ambition to secure and entertain itself, trying to avoid all irritation. so we cling to our pleasures and possessions, we fear change or force change, we try to create a nest or playground.

the lord of speech refers to the use of intellect in relating to our world. we adopt sets of categories which serve as handles, as ways of managing phenomena. the most fully developed products of this tendency are ideologies, the systems of ideas that rationalize, justify, and sanctify our lives. nationalism, communism, existentialism, christianity, buddhism -- all provide us with identities, rules of action, and interpretations of how and why things happen as they do.

again, the use of intellect is not in itself the lord of speech. the lord of speech refers to the inclination on the part of ego to interpret anything that is threatening or irritating in such a way as to neutralize the threat or turn it into something "positive" from ego's point of view. the lord of speech refers to the use of concepts as filters to screen us from a direct perception of what is. the concepts are taken too seriously; they are used as tools to solidify our world and ourselves. if a world of nameable things exists, then "i" as one of the nameable things exists as well. we wish not to leave any room for threatening doubt, uncertainty or confusion.

the lord of mind refers to the effort of consciousness to maintain awareness of itself. the lord of mind rules when we use spiritual and psychological disciplines as the means of maintaining our self-consciousness, of holding onto our sense of self. drugs, yoga, prayer, meditation, trances, various psychotherapies -- all can be used in this way.

ego is able to convert everything to its own use, even spirituality. for example, if you have learned of a particularly beneficial mediation technique of spiritual practice, then ego's attitude is, first to regard it as an object of fascination and, second to examine it. finally, since ego is seeming solid and cannot really absorb anything, it can only mimic. thus ego tries to examine and imitate the practice of meditation and the meditative way of life. when we have learned all the tricks and answers of the spiritual game, we automatically try to imitate spirituality, since real involvement would require the complete elimination of ego, and actually the last thing we want to do is to give up the ego completely. however, we cannot experience that which we are trying to imitate; we can only find some area within the bounds of ego that seems to be the same thing. ego translates everything in terms of its own state of health, its own inherent qualities. it feels a sense of great accomplishment and excitement at having been able to create such a pattern. at last it has created a tangible accomplishment, a confirmation of its own individuality.

if we become successful at maintaining our self-consciousness through spiritual techniques, then genuine spiritual development is highly unlikely. our mental habits become so strong as to be hard to penetrate. we may even go so far as to achieve the totally demonic state of complete "egohood."

even though the lord of mind is the most powerful in subverting spirituality, still the other two lords can also rule the spiritual practice. retreat to nature, isolation, simple, quiet, high people -- all can be ways of shielding oneself from irritation, all can be expressions of the lord of form. or perhaps religion may provide us with a rationalization for creating a secure nest, a simple but comfortable home, for acquiring an amiable mate, and a stable, easy job.

the lord of speech is involved in spiritual practice as well. in following a spiritual path we may substitute a new religious ideology for our former beliefs, but continue to use it in the old neurotic way. regardless of how sublime our ideas may be, if we take them too seriously and use them to maintain our ego, we are still being ruled by the lord of speech.

most of us, if we examine our actions, would probably agree that we are ruled by one or more of the three lords. "but," we might ask, "so what? this is simply a description of the human condition. yes, we know that our technology cannot shield us from war, crime, illness, economic insecurity, laborious work, old age and death; nor can our ideologies shield us from doubt, uncertainty, confusion and disorientation; nor can our therapies protect us from the dissolution of the high states of consciousness that we may temporarily achieve and the disillusionment and anguish that follow. but else are we to do? the three lords seem too powerful to overthrow, and we don't know what to replace them with."

the buddha, troubled by these questions, examined the process by which the three lords rule. he questioned why our minds follow them and whether there is another way. he discovered that the three lords seduce us by creating a fundamental myth: that we are solid beings. but ultimately the myth is false, a huge hoax, a gigantic fraud, and it is the root of our suffering. in order to make this discovery he had to break through very elaborate defenses erected by the three lords to prevent their subjects from discovering the fundamental deception which is the source of their power. we cannot in any way free ourselves from the domination of the three lords unless we too cut through, layer by layer, the elaborate defenses of these lords.

the lords' defenses are created out of the material of our minds. this material of mind is used by the lords in such a way as to maintain the basic myth of solidity. in order to see for ourselves how this process works we must examine our own experience. "but how," we might ask, "are we to conduct the examination? what method or tool are we to use?" the method that the buddha discovered is meditation. he discovered that struggling to find answers did not work. it was only when there were gaps in his struggle that insights came to him. he began to realize that there was a sane, awake quality within him which manifested only in the absence of struggle. so the practice of meditation involves "letting be."

. . .

such practice is necessary generally because our thinking pattern, our conceptualized way of conducting our life in the world, is either too manipulative, imposing itself upon the world, or else runs completely wild and uncontrolled. therefore, our meditation practice must begin with ego's outermost layer, the discursive thoughts which continually run through our minds, our mental gossip. the lords use discursive thought as their first line of defense, as the pawns in their effort to deceive us. the more we generate thoughts, the busier we are mentally and the more convinced we are of our existence. so the lords are constantly trying to activate these thoughts, trying to create a constant overlapping of thoughts so that nothing can be seen beyond them. in true meditation there is no ambition to stir up thoughts, nor is there an ambition to suppress them. they are just allowed to occur spontaneously and become an expression of basic sanity. they become the expression of the precision and the clarity of the awakened state of mind.

if the strategy of continually creating overlapping thoughts is penetrated, then the lords stir up emotions to distract us. the exciting, colorful, dramatic quality of the emotions captures our attention as if we were watching an absorbing film show. in the practice of meditation we neither encourage emotions nor repress them. by seeing them clearly, by allowing them to be as they are, we no longer permit them to serve as a means of entertaining and distracting us. thus they become the inexhaustible energy which fulfills egoless action.

in the absence of thoughts and emotions the lords bring up a still more powerful weapon, concepts. labeling phenomena creates a feeling of a solid definite world of "things." such a solid world reassures us that we are a solid, continuous thing as well. the world exists, therefore i, the perceiver of the world, exist. meditation involves seeing the transparency of concepts, so that labeling no longer serves as a way of solidifying our world and our image of self.

whereas

excerpts from "whereas" by layli long soldier

WHEREAS a friend senses what she calls cultural emptiness in a poet's work and after a read-
ing she feels bad for feeling bad for the poet she admits. i want to respond the same could be
said for me, some sticky current of Indian emptiness. i feel it not just in my poems but when
i'm on drives, in conversations, or as i lie down to sleep but since this dialogue is about writing
i want to be correct with my languageness. in a note following the entry for Indian an oxford
dictionary warns: do not use Indian or Red Indian to talk about American native peoples, as these 
terms are now outdated; use American Indian instead. so i explain perhaps the same could be
said for my work some burden of American Indian emptiness in my poems how American
Indian emptiness surfaces not just on the page but often on drives, in conversations, or when i
lie down to sleep. but the term American Indian parts our conversation like a hollow bloated
boat that is not ours that neither my friend nor i want to board, knowing it will never take us
anywhere but to rot. if the language of race is ever truly attached to emptiness whatever it is
i feel now has me in the hull, head knees feet curled, i dare say, to fetal position --- but better
stated as the form i resort to inside the jaws of a reference;

.
.
.
WHEREAS my eyes land on the shoreline of "the arrival of Europeans in North America
opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples." because in others, i hate the act

of laughing when hurt injured or in cases of danger. that bitter hiding. my daughter picks up
new habits from friends. she'd been running, tripped, slid on knees and palms onto asphalt.

they carried her into the kitchen, she just fell, she's bleeding! deep red streams
down her arms and legs, trails on white tile. i looked at her face. a smile

quivered her. a laugh, a nervous. doing as her friends do, she braved new behavior, feigned
a grin --- i couldn't name it but i could spot it. stop, my girl. if you're hurting, cry.

like that. she let it out, a flood from living room to bathroom. then a soft water pour
i washed carefully light touch clean cotton to bandage. i faced her i reminded,

in our home in our family we are ourselves, real feelings. be true. yet i'm serious
when i say i laugh reading the phrase, "opened a new chapter." i can't help my body.

i shake. the realization that it took this phrase to show. my daughter's quiver isn't new ---
but a deep practice very old she's watching me;

consumption

excerpt from platform by michel houellebecq

she remembered the sales-pitch mnemonic SURE - strategic planning, understanding, response management, execution excellence; she remembered, too, the reality, which was infinitely more simple. but most of the salesgirls were very young - most of them had barely passed their BTS diploma, and it was easier to speak to them in their own language. talking to some of the girls, she realized that jean-louis barma's typology was still being taught in colleges. (the 'technician consumer': product-centered, sensitive to quantitative aspects, attaches great importance to the technical aspects of the product. the 'devout consumer': trusts the salesperson blindly because he does not understand the product. the 'complicit consumer': happy to focus on points he has in common with the salesperson if the latter knows how to establish a good interpersonal relationship. the 'manipulative consumer': a manipulator whose strategy is to deal directly with the supplier and thus get the best deal. the 'developing consumer': attentive to the salesperson, whom he respects, to the product offered, aware of his needs, he communicates easily.)

we had paid so much

excerpt from we need new names by noviolet bulawayo

how hard it was to get to america -- harder than crawling through the anus of a needle. for the visas and passports, we begged, despaired, lied, groveled, promised, charmed, bribed -- anything to get us out of the country. for his passport and travel, tshaka zulu sold all of his father's cows, against the old man's wishes. perserverance had to take his sister netsai out of school. nqo worked the fields of botswana for nine months. nozipho, like primrose and sicelokuhle and maidei, slept with that fat black pig banyile khoza from the passport office. girls flat on their back, banyile between their legs, america on their minds.

to send us off properly, our elders spilled tobacco on the dry earth to summon the spirits of the ancestors for our protection. unlike in years long gone, the spirits did not come dancing from the land beneath. they crawled. they stalled. they were hungry. they wanted blood and meat and millet beer, they wanted sacrifices, they wanted gifts. and, save for a few grains of tobacco, we had nothing to give, absolutely nothing. and so the spirts just gazed at us with eyes milked dry of care. between themselves they whispered: how will these ones ever be whole in that 'melika, as far away from the graves of the ancestors as it is?

do people not like in fear in 'melika, fear of evil?

do they not say it is like a grave in that 'melika, that going there is like burying yourself because your people may never see you again?

is not 'melika also that wretched place where they took looted black sons and daughters those many, many years ago?

we heard all this but we let it enter in one ear and leave through the other, pretended we did not hear. we would not be moved, we would not listen; we were going to america. in the footsteps of those looted black sons and daughters, we were going, yes, we were going. and when we got to america we took our dreams, looked at them tenderly as if they were newly born children, and put them away; we would not be pursuing them. we would never be the things we had wanted to be: doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers. no school for us, even though our visas were school visas. we knew we did not have the money for school to begin with, but we had applied for school visas because that was the only way out.

instead of going to school, we worked. our social security cards said valid for work only with ins authorization, but we gritted our teeth and broke the law and worked; what else could we do? what could we have done? what could anybody have done? and because we were breaking the law, we dropped our heads in shame; we had never broken any laws before. we dropped our heads because we were no longer people; we were now illegals.

when they debated what to do with illegals, we stopped breathing, stopped laughing, stopped everything, and listened. we heard: exporting america, broken borders, war on the middle class, invasion, deportation, illegals, illegals. we bit our tongues till we tasted blood, sat tensely on one butt cheek, afraid to sit on both because how can you sit properly when you don't know about your tomorrow?

and because we were illegal and afraid to be discovered, we mostly kept to ourselves, stuck to our kind and shied away from those who were not like us. we did not know what they would think of us, what they would do about us. we did not want their wrath, we did not want their curiosity, we did not want any attention. we did not meet stares and we avoided gazes. we hid our real names, gave false ones when asked. we built mountains between us and them, we dug rivers, we planted thorns -- we had paid so much to be in america and we did not want to lose it all.

when they talked about employers checking on workers, our hearts sank. we recalled the tatters of our country left behind, barely held together by american dollars, by monies from other countries, and our blood went cold. and when at work they asked for our papers, we scurried like startled hens and flocked to unwanted jobs, where we met the others, many others. others with names like myths, names like puzzles, names we had never heard before: virgilio, balamugunthan, faheem, abdulrahman, aziz, baako, dae-hyun, ousmane, kimatsu. when it was hard to say the many strange names, we called them by their countries.

so how on earth do you do this, sri lanka?

mexico, are you coming or what?

is it really true you sold a kidney to come to america, india?
guys, just give tshaka zulu a break, the guy is old, i'm just saying.
we know you despise this job, sudan, but deal with it, man.
come, ethiopia, move, move, move; israel, kazakhstan, niger, brothers, let's go!

the others spoke languages we did not know, worshipped different gods, ate what we would not dare touch. but like us, they had left their homelands behind. they flipped open their wallets to show us faded photographs of mothers whose faces bore the same creases of worry as our very own mothers, siblings bleak-eyed with dreams unfulfilled like those of our own, fathers forlorn and defeated like ours. we had never seen their countries but we knew about everything in those pictures; we were not altogether strangers. . .

that is how time went. it flew and we did not see it flying. we did not got back home to visit because we did not have the papers for our return, and so we just stayed, knowing that if we went we would not be able to reenter america. we stayed, like prisoners, only we chose to be prisoners and we loved our prison; it was not a bad prison. and when things only got worse in our country, we pulled our shackles even tighter and said, we are not leaving america, no, we are not leaving.

and then our own children were born. we held their american birth certificates tight. we did not name our children after our parents, after ourselves; we feared if we did they would not be able to say their own names, that their friends and teachers would not know how to call them. we gave them names that would make them belong in america, names that did not mean anything to us: aaron, josh, dana, corey, jack, kathleen. when our children were born, we did not bury their umbilical cords under the earth to bind them to the land because we had no land to call ours. we did not hold their heads over smoking herbs to make them strong, did not tie fetishes around their waists to protect them from evil spirits, did not brew beer and spill tobacco on the earth to announce their arrivals to the ancestors, instead, we smiled.

and when our parents reminded us over the phone that it had been a long, long time, and that they were getting old and needed to see us, needed to meet their grandchildren, we said, we are coming, mama, siyabuya baba; we are coming, gogo, tirikuuya sekuru. we did not want to tell them we still had no papers. and when they grew restless and cursed america for being the greedy monster that swallowed their children, swallowed the sons and daughters of other lands and refused to spit them out, we said, we are coming very soon, we are coming next year. and next year came and we said, next year. when next year came we said, next year for sure. and when next year for sure came we said, next year for real. and when next year for real came we said, we are coming, you'll see, just wait. and our parents waited and they saw, saw that we did not come.

they died waiting, clutching in their dried hands pictures of us leaning against the lady liberty, graves of lost sons and daughters in their hearts, old eyes glued to the sky for fulamatshinaz to bring forth lost sons and daughters. we could not attend their funerals because we still had no papers, and so we mourned from afar. we shut ourselves up and turned on the music so we did not raise alarm, writhed on the floor and wailed and wailed and wailed.

tenderness

quotes from great eastern sun by chogyam trungpa

"humility in the shambhala tradition also involves some kind of playfulness, which is a sense of humor. at the beginning, communicating with someone may be somewhat flat, but the sense of humor in the relationship is always lurking around the corner. instead of approaching things flatly, you may have to scan around to the right and the left, to see whether there are any sparky areas where you can communicate. so humility here is slightly different than in the catholic tradition. in most religious traditions, you feel humble because of a fear of punishment, pain, and sin. in the shambhala world, you feel full of it. you feel healthy and good. in fact, you feel proud. therefore, you feel humility. that's one of the shambhala contradictions or, we could say, dichotomies.

real humility is genuineness. it's not even honesty. honesty implies a twist of punishment or negativity -- that you have drawn the card for deception, put it in your pocket, and now you'll draw another card for honesty. but there's only one genuineness, which is being oneself to the fullest level."

"we are talking about how to work with very simple situations, such as talking to your landlord or landlady about the rent, consulting with your bank manager about taking out another loan, depositing money in your checking account, buying another house, doing your grocery shopping at the supermarket, or dealing with your dry cleaner. whatever situations you are working with, you have to be aware that every step you take is very precious. you cannot change this world into the great eastern sun world with a snap of your fingers. it can only change stitch by stitch. what thread you use, what kind of needles you use, and how you sew the fabrics together - that is purely up to you.

you might feel that this is such a small-minded approach that it will have almost no effect at all. particularly if you are gung ho on shambhala vision, you might be so impatient, thinking that this is taking too much time and won't have any effect. but that is not the case. we must go step-by-step, starting from square one. pay attention to your landlord, your grocery store, your bus, every place you go, everything you do habitually. look at them twice, thrice. how you deal with the cockroaches in your apartment, how you vacuum your floor, even how you flush the toilet: any dealings that you have with the outside world, so to speak, have to be witnessed thoroughly and watched very carefully. you do not need a tutor like i had. you have hundreds of tutors around you. all those situations are your tutors, and they will give you the message.

wisdom is not purely the product of intelligence. you have to work on things personally. it's not exactly hard work, but it's taxing in some sense, because you have to be constantly alert, all the time. the notion of wisdom is the same as prajna, or the discriminating awareness that we discussed earlier in the context of renunciation. i am using the word wisdom here because what you are being given is something that can only be taught to you in the form of a hint. having been given the hint, you pick up the message spontaneously. that is wisdom.

wisdom is what joins heaven and earth. you bring your zafu and zabuton, your meditation cushion and your meditation mat, together for the sitting practice of meditation. when the gong rings, you and your cushion are joined together. that is joining heaven and earth. i'm putting it on a very elementary level. joining heaven and earth is not like making a decision. it is the principle of a mirror. you have electricity or daylight, which is heaven. you have your body, your face, your uncombed hair, your beard -- which are all earth. then you have the mirror, which joins together that heaven and earth."

"working with yourself always involves a journey. as part of the journey, every one of us has to go through our own garbage. some of it is real garbage, which should be discarded, and some of it is organic garbage, which can be recycled. one important point is that, when you're going through your garbage and sorting things out, you have to admit to yourself that you are not being a 100 percent ideal student. you improvise, you stick with your own neurosis sometimes, and you are cheating yourself, somewhat. as long as that is acknowledged, it is not regarded as absolutely evil at all. how much of the journey is genuine and how much of it is hypocritical is very hard to sort out. as long as you try to just keep doing it, it's fine. it only becomes problematic if you try to philosophize or rationalize the whole thing.

as far as the shambhala principles are concerned, we don't believe in original sin. you are not fundamentally condemned. in fact, quite the opposite. fundamentally, you are good. in spite of your hypocrisy, you are capable of being good, and what you express will be good as well. it will work out fine.

in discussing know-how, our larger theme is letting go: knowing how to let go, what to let go, and how to relax in our world. in many cases, you've been given guidelines for how to relate with yourself and how to relate with others, but you haven't been given any guidelines for how to experience freedom. the expression of freedom has to come from you. letting go is not being purely carefree in a sloppy style. you have to evaluate what portion of discipline should be maintained in the name of integrity and what portion of discipline should be relaxed. so letting go is still a training process. at the same time, it contains fruition-level logic. . .

the shambhala society is very much concerned with what happens when we depart from the womb and regroup into the products of the womb, so to speak. we are asking people to remain clan-oriented, family-oriented. on the other hand, we're asking you not to hang on to the neurosis or the impetus that exists in being the child of somebody. we have to separate ourselves; at the same time, we have to come together in comradeship, working with human society. that is contradictory in itself, but it is at the same time full of wisdom."

"the third category of letting go is sadness and joy joined together. ordinarily, when you talk about feeling sad, it means that you are so hurt; you feel so bad. when you talk about feeling joyous, it means that you feel so excited and uplifted. here you develop sadness and joy at once. you begin to feel tender -- extremely tender and sad. when you fall in love for the first time, thinking about your lover, you have delightful ideas, but at the same time, you feel somewhat sad. it's not purely that your lover can't be with you or that your lover is long distant, but you feel tender even when you're together. on the spot, sharing the same room or the same bed, when you look at your lover, it feels wonderful. at the same time, it feels very touchy and sad. it is wonderful -- in fact, it is ideal -- that human emotions are expressed that way. when you feel sad, therefore, you feel great. hot and cold, sweet and sour, at once, take place.

according to the shambhala principles, you should feel that way with everything you do. whether you have a good time or a bad time, you should feel sad and delighted at once. that is how to be a real, decent human being, and it is also connected with the buddhist principle of longing, or devotion. longing is the hunger for sacredness. when you begin to feel you're too much in the secular world, you long for the sacred world. therefore, you feel sad, and you open yourself up that way. when you feel so sad and tender, that also brings ideas for how to uplift the rest of the world. joining sadness and joy is the only mechanism that brings the vision of the great eastern sun."

"heaven is anything that is spacious. it includes your lofty ideas, your beliefs, your metaphysics, your wishes, your desires. it is anything you hold as sacred, anything you might put in your safe-deposit box: your jewelry, your birth certificate, your college diploma. earth is related with your personal existence, your car keys, the keys to your apartment, money in your wallet, your husband, your wife, your groceries for the night or for the rest of the week. so heaven is the lofty principle, and earth is what you actually have in your refrigerator or your bank account.

joining them together is challenging. if you think in terms of how a nation might join heaven and earth together, it gets quite complicated. but if you begin with yourself and how you relate personally to joining heaven and earth, that's quite simple and domestic. you might think that your personal heaven and earth are not sacred enough to be joined together. but in the shambhala world, we have fundamental appreciation and respect for whatever we do. every act is a sacred act. with that inspiration, we regard every experience in our life as sacred as well. therefore, we can join heaven and earth together. it could be as mundane as going to the supermarket to buy toilet tissue. you bring it home, then you use it, and you flush it down the toilet. you are joining heaven and earth together. when you buy it, you have heaven. when you use it, you have earth. you join them together, and it's very beautiful. you can accomplish the whole thing."

if it was the truth

from m archive by alexis pauline gumbs


that was the challenge. to create oneself anew on a regular basis. it started with every seven years (also called the new cell cycle) and accelerated for the talented. to every three years, every year, every season, every month, every day until the prestige came from re-creating a self unrecognizable (to both your former self and the expectations of others) multiple times in any given day. they said it was towards the evolution of the community. a community that could not depend on previous expectations would have to evolve new needs. their individual shapeshifting was towards less collective dependence on a former world. let the new world meet us faster where we are! the people sometimes said to affirm a particularly brave reinvention.

they went from mostly not knowing their neighbors to perpetually not knowing themselves. which seemed more useful. and like the rare urban neighbor with the time to watch their transforming neighbors walk in and out their doors differently every day, the social media applications were even more useful for creating narrative out of the random moments of self-documentation offered by the digitally literate.

maybe that's where they went wrong. the watching. because at some point the point changed from transforming need and evolving skills to performing further and further newness. as if novelty itself was the measure and the outcome and the point again. and eventually it distilled down to the same people looking different every day and going to the same places they always went just to provoke contrast and doing the same things they always did (eventually just the work of looking for and financing new costumes). so the challenge was called off around the time when it got most boring.

it wasn't worth the use of fossil fuels.


*                                   *                               *                                *

but that was before. i am trying to describe to you what it was like when the doers decided to rest. when they carefully placed what they knew in the easiest places to find it and sat down. i don't know if wind systems really take deep breaths on their own, but it felt like it. the stillness was profound. and for a while all the talkers could hear were their own voices resounding like always, but pretty soon they had to listen for the source of this strange silence where the rhythm of other people's doing had been. it was the sound of a voice bouncing with nothing to take credit for. nothing left, finally, to steal. it was hollow and horrifying from that perspective.

and the former doers retained their restraint. some of them shaking in their seats. some of them repeating mantras and biting the insides of their cheeks, but quite a few of them just honestly passed out in the deeply earned and dreamless sleep of the overused.

you should have been there. you had to be there to really feel the contrast. all that frantic energy, all that back-and-forth friction and the robust remarking that tried to drown it all out. and then the moment it just stopped. and if it was truth you wanted, you could find it on the floor, in the kitchen, lying on the street just so. if it was truth you wanted, here it was. i mean make yourself at home already.