Fatuous Love
Fatuous Love
I'm in a bad mood I know is being caused by nicotine and exercise.
When I was young I’d fantasize about showing up my naysayers. I loved dance off scenes in coming-of-age movies, and ninja reveals in teen anime. I realize in hindsight the people I fantasized impressing were not naysayers. It’s much worse than disdain that these people harbored. They were indifferent. These were people who weren’t impressed by anything, nor cared much for my aspirations to greatness, and the ignorance would be particularly painful because it was my dad and his stupid “none of this matters” wisdom. I hope he knows how little I think of his philosophy. I believe all of this matters. Every fucking last fiber of everything matters. I will name every single feeling out loud until I have named every single feeling, told every single story.
I loathe the interpretations of Buddhism that amount to not paying attention. White people especially, seem fond of this tract to inner peace, not affected by the suffering caused by what ends up being institutional religion either way. But inner peace sure is popular even if it means running away from your survivors. I read an interesting take on Jainism in Maximum City (amazing book I highly recommend by the way, though I think we’ve cancelled its author, Suketu Mehta). Jainism is the extreme form of mindful asceticism. Believers do not disturb ANY living being—not the bacteria in their teeth, not the flora in the effects of their bowels, not the fruit still hanging on a tree (it must fall in order to be consumed). Believers must also give up all of their worldly possessions and break all connection to family. Converts shave their heads and say ritual farewells to their children, their parents. Mehta, however, illuminates that many Jain converts are ultra-wealthy diamond traders who give up their personal possessions and connections to people as a sort of legal absolution when they become mired in personal property and tax troubles. In other words, leaving the mundanity of our obligations is a spiritual declaration of bankruptcy. All debts and crimes are then forgiven because the perpetrator is giving up anything that could be used for restitution.
I loathe the men who espouse this avoidance, who champion this form of withholding, who avoid completing their troubles by sequestering themselves.
I watched Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders the other night, randomly. The shortest version of the story I can tell is that a drifter returns to an 8 year old son who reluctantly re-establishes a bond with the dad because dad convinces son that they can find his mother and reunite as a family. Though they do find the mother, we learn the father was a horribly abusive man and the mother left them because she feared for her life. Somehow though, we feel compassion for the father when he decides to leave the woman and the child, again. You know, to protect them from his sociopathy.
I am in a terrible mood. I am trying to blame the movie, or the heat, but it’s honestly just because I am trying new modalities of creative work, and my head hurts from yo yo dieting nicotine candies and fake meat, and I’ve been bombing my gut with indulgently salty snacks. This mood is better than being angry at people, but jesus am I in a bad mood. I keep my focus trained on the mood and not the stories that may cause them. I keep at these mood-debilitating activities that I can overcome the physical feat (playing with strength, eating normally), and feel emotional control.
I fantasize about showing up my own self. Arriving clueless to my own power I reveal care through this cluelessness. There will never be a day I am not in the grief, so instead of sheltering the story, I imagine wearing it through a new color in my feathers, a diet that reveals transformation. In the grief, I beg for your regard and instead garner the attention of others whom we’ve neglected along the way. If I tell them I love them, perhaps then I will finally feel you connect, too
