mattSPACE

“Agapē (a’gɑpeɪ) (Gk. αγάπη ), is one of several Greek words meaning love. The word has been used in different ways by a variety of contemporary and ancient sources, including Biblical authors. Many have thought that this word represents divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, thoughtful love. Greek philosophers at the time of Plato and other ancient authors use the term to denote love of a spouse or family or affection for a particular activity, in contrast to philia, an affection that could either denote brotherhood or generally a non-sexual.”

The idea of an “auto-ethnography” is something I’ve been giving thought to. It’s been a long time since I’ve had thoughts about myself that aren’t either contrived or self-ridiculing, or both. Lately, I’m just thinking in the normal train of thought and then something comes into my mind that is wise, that helps me understand myself. And it feels that these thoughts are new in my mind, completely new. For example, I realized last night that I always look for a better version of myself in the men I’m attracted to. Although I think I’ve acknowledged this before as a sort of retroactive analysis/ confession, I’ve rarely caught myself in the moment doing it. Last night I saw myself doing it and then I stopped myself. Self control – as approaching the self becomes ethnographic as opposed to egotistical, it becomes easier to notice what I do and gently let it go without judgment or self-hatred.
Another example of my noticing behavioral patterns is my need for external reinforcement of my self worth. We all look for this, most of us anyway. Whether we desire affirmations that are positive or negative, we are always looking for the right voice or gaze to say the right thing or give the right look, so that we are sure we know who we are.
driven right now. I want to create something. I want to do something. I want to make something. I want to do something for the world. I don’t know what that might be, but I feel shitty about not doing anything. I want so badly to be contributing and not just consuming, But what am I doing? I know there are opportunities, but I have avoided them. Maybe it is because I have never contributed to the world and I am afraid of the changes in my life that it will require. I feel that something fundamental must change. My whole life I have fought for myself, and this fight, I think, has been more or less a good fight, a just fight. But I’ve outgrown the battles of my adolescence. Now, when I feel immature yearnings and pains rise up I am aware of them as humorous, as passing distractions, as clumsy old ghosts. They are known, they are predictable. But they are still so potent.
Yet new battle is something greater and beyond me. It is not a battle fought well with the self. It’s a battle fought with selflessness. This is what I am having trouble with. Selflessness is not something I know. Perhaps I have been charitable before, but is always through myself. I have never really know agape, the love of all loves, the love of the saints and the gurus, the love which goes in all directions but comes from no single source. The love the flows like neutrinos from the sun, indiscriminately through all things.

All things are empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing is pure, nothing is stained,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.

So, in emptiness, there is no body,
no feeling, no thought,
no will, no consciousness.
There are no eyes, no ears,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind.
There is no seeing, no hearing,
no smelling, no tasting,
no touching, no imagining.
There is nothing seen, nor heard,
nor smelled, nor tasted,
nor touched, nor imagined.

There is no ignorance,
and no end to ignorance.
There is no old age and death,
and no end to old age and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
There is no attainment of wisdom,
and no wisdom to attain.

Because There is Nothing to Be Attained,
The Bodhisattva Relying On Prajna Paramita Has
No Obstruction in His Mind.

Because There is No Obstruction, He Has no Fear.

And He passes Far Beyond Confused Imagination.

And Reaches Ultimate Nirvana.

***The full version with commentary here.***

… That’s why it’s so comfortable doing it over and over again. I repeat myself to confirm that that Matt, that conception of myself, is indeed who I am. Of course, there is no stable identity. I work so hard to maintain this person to whom I’ve become attached – all in vein. Recently, however, I have been shedding some of the attachment. And when that doesn’t occur, at least I am observing (with a loving, humored gaze) my attachments and predictable actions. “Oh Matt, I say. Oh Matt you’re so young and you really want to be loved and understood.” I observe this without the disappointment to which I am accustomed. I observe and with recognition I defeat the pattern.

I woke up this morning dreaming about baseball. I had, for the first time in my whole life, a desire to hit a ball with a bat. I remember Little League: a horror every weekend. I played far left field because eight year olds don’t hit that far. When my team was up to bat, I rarely left the dugout. When I did, I always struck out. An entire season passed and I did nothing for the team, I did nothing for myself. I hated that game. I hated the people. My ego raged the whole time. I couldn’t get their approval as a person and I couldn’t get their approval as an athlete so the elementary school version of myself thought to himself, “Fuck it. Fuck you all. And fuck your caveman-like desire to hit a ball with a club and run around in a circle.” My high opinion of sports has persisted to today.

Why then did I wake up craving the crack of the bat?

I am realizing that since I was very young I have avoided the position of beginner. I resisting learning the guitar and piano from my father. I avoid sports because I’m not great at them on first try. I avoid friendships with people that won’t give me the approval I think I need. I look for sexually power as a source of security. I end up in bed with men that like me more than I will ever like them… only to realize that that’s the only reason I’m in bed with them. All of this is low-risk living, it seems to me. I do what my ego can handle. And the ego can’t handle very much. It is subtly debilitating.

What is strange is that even though the ego craves what it can predict it doesn’t take into account what is actually predictable: imperfection, failure, death. If I accept these things as possibilities I won’t always have to live life as if they can be avoided. I will be embarrassed at some point. I will miss the ball. I will move sometime when I meditate.
Last night I went to my first West African dance class and on Tuesday night I went to the Zen center. I am taking the position of beginner and it feels right. It is scary, but I no longer feel like it’s going to kill me. It is because I have rejected the authority and supremacy of my ego. The wild horse that used to throw me around is turning into a little lap dog that I can walk on a leash. And all of a sudden I think I could surprise myself again.

I am ready to take on the taking off of my protective gear. I am ready to declare and then let go of the consumeristic self-obsession in which most of us (in my peer group) engage. Here is my declaration!

I am afraid. I am afraid of not pleasing my parents. I am afraid of not pleasing the anonymous gaze which I have allowed to reside in my mind and belly. I am afraid of the “cop in my head” (as Boal calls it), the totalitarian government which has taken power over my psyche. I am afraid.

I am horny. I am extremely preoccupied with sex and with the attractiveness, the mysteriousness, the seeming incorrigibility of men. I am ready to admit this and move on instead of denying it to myself and others, chastising myself every time I feel attraction in public, and pursuing relationships (with both men and woman) which re-enforce this self-destructive tendency.

I am angry. I am enraged about the systematic destruction of the biosphere, the ignorance of most of those who are complicit in this process, the carelessness of those who are more aware, and humanistic discourses (on race for example) which exclude or ignore the environment in favor of a anthropocentric worldview. In a very personal way, I am furious about the conditions under which I grew up, even though they were comparatively favorable. My anger in this regard stems from a near complete lack of education or general acknowledgement of nature in any social sphere, the complete lack of acceptance and/or visibility of queer people, people of differing cultural, national, religious, or racial backgrounds, animals, and plants.

I am needy of your love and approval. I want you to like me. I will manipulate you (perhaps so well that you won’t even notice) so that you validate my pursuits and confirm my goodness. This is because I do not believe in myself. Most people do not believe in themselves. The most conniving, hubristic individuals must exert their power over others in order to prove to themselves that they are valid, righteous, individuals. If they had no doubt, they’d have nothing to prove. In this manner, I have spent what I consider an unhealthy (but by no means unusual) amount of time trying to conform myself to an image of a “standard” human being. Public education as well as years of what anthropologists call informal sanctions have conditioned me to suppress my own feelings – including such basic urges such as sexual orientation – in favor of enacting a presentation of self which appears to arise from “acceptable” emotional impulses.

I am quixotic. I want to transfer again. I want to drift through Sub-Saharan Africa. I want to move to the West Coast and live in a Zen Center. I want to go back to Spain. I want to move back to Ponte Vedra, start a farm, and run an organic produce market which doubles as a space for ecological, anthropological, and artistic pedagogy so that other children will not have the same anger I have today.

I am not going to apologize. In the words of Jurassic 5: “Fuck the 1st Amendment! My speech was free the day my soul descended!” Beyond constitutional rights, there is nothing, no pre-existing condition, no argument which warrants my remorse for declaring the above. The more honest I am with myself and those who I am close to the further (I individually and we as a community) will go in our shared desire to have healthy, non-destructive, joyess lives. Radical honesty is the only way.

Now that I have made these statements, I intend to challenge myself to live these feelings honestly and through this pursuit, attempt to overcome them or integrate them healthily (i.e. in a way that doesn’t produce pain in my life or those of others) into my life.
I will follow these declarations with a list of goals. A map of my most difficult terrain now laid before me, I hope to conceive of a way through, a path to transcendence, and realization. Vamos a ver lo que pasa…

So, I’m finally writing again. Jamie and I have been flying (that is driving quickly) across North America – Wisconson, Minnesota, South Dakota, Montanta, British Columbia, Oregon. We’ve been taken in by a Christian summer camp in Frost, MN (pop 400), a jaded environmental lawer in Missoula, MT, the horse-breaking daughter of a logger in St. Ignacias, MT, a queer human rights activist in Vancouver, Jamie’s amazing friend and teacher from her year in India and Nepal, also named Jamie, on Bowen Island, BC, and, most recently, a self-sufficient, off the grid, organic farm and appropriate technology institute/community outside of Cottage Grive, OR. We have camped in incredible places all over the west and currently have our tent set up in a hidden cove on the Oregon coast. I am in love with America for the first time. The emphasis on public land out here in the west is so refreshing. Even in small towns, there seems to be a stronger awareness of the environment, whether as recreational sites, natural resources, or habitats in need of protection. This sensibility is refreshing coming from six months in the suburbs of Chicago. On the prairie of IL, with its high availability of water and complete lack of topographical variation (i.e. no hills or mountains) development sprawls out to the horizon, a grid of cement, steel, and wires which cover and cut the land with no concern for ecology. The West certainly has its evironmental issues – water-use rights, logging, over-hunting, to name a few – but there seems to be more of an active discourse here, or, rather, one that takes place in many more circles.

Another element of discovery on the trip has been my discovery of Buddhism. I suppose Buddhism has never been far from my mind. But I have never so clearly understood that whether Zen or Shambala, I think it is part of my path.

Well, I want to write more but Jamie is waiting and we’re both starving (have to go back to the tent and make polenta). So, whoever is reading this, I love you. Write to me.

Here is a link to some photos from my trip with Jamie.

(more…)

I’m grasping for a sense of complete engagement. I remember wanting to go to a monastery when I was younger; fifteen or so. Slowly, as I learned to suppress my quixotic desperation I lost the desire to be in that kind of removed, intense environment. But recently the desire is coming back. And if it is not a desire, it is an image which comes as a logical step in an imaginary trajectory. I see still images of myself set next to one another, images which signify evolution, like the gradually rising ape rising into man. Instead of standing, however, I have recently come to see myself lowering, sitting, and meditating. My diagram, like those on the walls of biology classrooms has no background. In this premonition I have no idea where I will be sitting, but I think it is in a retreat.
What a poorly written paragraph! Jack is laying on the couch in my living room. At first he was sleeping, but now he’s creating a party on his phone/computer combination. He is charming people into the party, creating a slightly different advertisement for each person. He is attuned to what appeals to whom. And I have been listening while writing and have proved to myself again that I need an isolated experience.

There is so much filling my head right now. I have drifted through the daily structures which slice and cut at my sanity, like sliding down the branch of a thorn bush. This is how I experience a schedule which comes not from me, but comes as a mandate from a job or school or some other exterior source. S, I haven’t been writing. This is what work does to a person. How am I ever going to get a job?

I’m en route to New York from Jacksonville. I visited my family and now I’m off to meet Jamie and drive back to Chi. But the logistics of my travel are unimportant. What’s fascinating to me is the experience of travel itself. And even that isn’t so interesting to me as this: what has been on my mind a lot lately (thanks in part to the frequency with which I’ve been smoking) is representations and their reification. What I mean by this is the way we understand life through breaking it down into all its constituent parts. This practice of separating, differentiating, categorizing, and cataloging creates the world for us. It is the means by which the world becomes knowable… so we don’t know The World in a holistic sense. Instead we know pieces, pieces which we name with words and associate with arrested images. And through this process of naming and associating we come to know the signifier more intimately than the signified. And perhaps we know nothing but the signifier. And a reverse occurs in which the signified (the real aspect of the world) becomes the signifier for the abstract concept. And the concept, the imaginary image, becomes more real than the piece of reality to which it was meant to refer.
Why is this important to me? It is because living only through a system of signification (which is more often than not originated by powers outside of our control) has such a dissociative quality. Categories are cages. They prevent us from rising out of our “race” and our “nation” and our “sexuality” and being a human and experiencing life unadulterated, fully, openly, freely.

***
So aware of my movements and the movements of others. This choreography, this fascinating choreography that moves us. What poem was it that says, “how can we tell the dancer from the dance?” How can we tell the citizens from the city? The social beings from the society? Why have these questions not been asked? No, they have been asked, but not answered. My question will always be this way. How do I free myself from this? I continue to ask the question but I have come to the tentative conclusion that there is no answer, that there is no sure way to differentiate.

What to do this summer! Making plans is the same folly as making magic. We cast our visions into the future hoping they will materialize, we reach into the void and hope to pull out a bunny! I am exploring into some void and I have not found what I expected to find. And she was right. She was right all along. I met a man the other night, who fascinates me. She was right, even though I have a hard time admitting it to myself. Why? I cannot tell what this is. I don’t know what weighs more on me and whether weight is good or bad. Or whether good and bad are righteous measures. I don’t know what righteousness is. But I have met a man I want to laugh with. Something reaches out of my body, something uncategorizable.