so comparing people is the current facebook fad.

the applications “compare people,” “you are beautiful,” “top friends” and “hot list” (to name a few) facilitate people comparisons.

you compare your friends to each other on the basis of their looks, personality, smarts, artistic ability etc., and in turn, await their appraisal of you. “compare people” allows for direct comparison of two individuals. you must designate priya as hotter than sophie. the results of these dyadic comparisons are used to rank everyone within a friend group. whomever is called hotter than most often floats to the top of the hotness (or cuteness or smartness) ranks. other applications do not require that you compare your friends to each other, but that you vote, basically, for worthy friends. if you think greg is hot, you click on him. no need to call him hotter than blake. however the comparison still takes place, albeit indirectly. if greg gets more votes than blake, he must be hotter than blake.

and of course, the hope is, that someone out there will call you hot. or at least you’ll find out where you really stand. or that’s what “compare people” promises:

Find out who stands where in various categories: cutest, sexiest, smartest and many more. Most importantly, find out where you fit in!

or as “you are beautiful’ puts it:

Start sending beautifulness points now, and see where you rank among your most Beautiful friends!

this system presupposes that we cannot objectively judge ourselves, only others can. makes sense. if i think “gee. francesca sure is a fatty, but i’d never tell her that.” does it not seem plausible that others could be thinking “gee. erin sure is a fatty, but i’d never tell her that.”? and of course if i want to behave appropriately in the world, i need to know “where i fit in.” that’s why “compare people” says “most importantly.” i need to know what to flaunt and what to play down. i need to know what i may “realistically” pursue. i don’t want to kid myself into thinking i’ll be remembered as the next picasso when i’m just another thomas kinkade. i don’t want to be one of those poor bastards on american idol who thinks he has a shot, only to be plastered all over youtube as exemplary of the sucky, gong show-type audition. i don’t want to ask out that hot, brilliant TA unless i feel confident that i have something comparable to offer. conversely, i don’t want to hang my head, waste my life, if i have real reason to be proud…if i have license to go for it…whatever “it” may be.

we live in what purports to be a meritocracy. this is the neoliberal context. the individual is the molecule of neoliberalism. we celebrate the individual, because he (yes he) can do anything. he can “find his niche.” he can make the world a better place. he can get famous. he can excel. he can make his unique contribution. in fact his happiness relies on making his way in the world. if he is unhappy, it can’t be the world’s fault. he must be unhappy because he didn’t work hard enough, try hard enough, make enough money, find the right job, the right partner, the right community, the right house, the right modes of developing and expressing his talents. i mean he could be happy, right? we see it in the movies. if he’s not happy, it’s because it doesn’t have something he could get if he tried. and if he can’t get what he wishes he had, it’s because he doesn’t know his proper place. his expectations are unrealistic.

but neoliberalism does not emphasize this, the unrealistic. it’s always onward and upward! if our hero(the individual)’s expectations are unrealistic, he simply has to change tactics. he hasn’t yet found his “calling”–his particular genius. and if he’s 99, looking back on his life, and he thinks, “damn. when do i start living?” well, he just ran out of time. maybe 20 more years and he would have made it.

we’re obsessed with hierarchy. with upward potentiality. since fulfillment is “up there” somewhere waiting for us. or that’s what “america’s got talent,” donald trump, thevaginainstitute.com, Harvard and cosmo want us to believe.

but there is no singular “you,” out there in the world that can be judged, measured, scrutinized by an all-knowing, all-seeing Other.

if i approach my art believing that only “you” can tell me whether or not it is “good,” if i subject my art to your approval, but not to my own, what kind of art can i possibly make? if i respect no one’s art (past or present) and take in no one’s criticisms, what kind of art can i possibly make? if i speak words i wouldn’t fight for, how could they be worth speaking?

what makes my understanding of myself somehow less valid than your understanding of me? why should i even care what your opinion (of anything) is? do i respect your opinion? does it move me? does it make sense to me? at bottom, the only way to answer the question “how do i want to be in the world?” is to answer the question “what do i value?” this can take time and a great deal of thinking and feeling. and answers need not be in words or even fully formed thoughts. but there must be (an) answer(s).

with (an) answer(s), i am uniquely positioned to understand myself better than anyone else could. when i declare “this is what i value,” i can turn my attention and thoughtfulness to my relationship with what i value. i can observe myself. i can ask “does this action/art/idea (successfully) do what i want?” and if i value what i have declared i value (again, not necessarily in words and not necessarily singular), then i will be able to take in information, and process it, without fear…because i am not on trial. what is on trial is whether i have acted according to or furthered what i value. if i have not, that is information i can use. if i have, that is information i can use. if i respect a person’s opinion (not equivalent to whether or not i respect her), she can provide me with information i can use to clarify my values and better make real those values. if i do not respect her opinion, to HELL with her opinion! i will not let an opinion i do not respect weigh on my conscience or on my ego. what do i mean by “respect?” i respect someone’s opinion of my thinking about goodness if she has demonstrated thoughtfulness, introspection, care, kindness, integrity and appreciation for the subtly with which i approach meaning.

if you answer the question “who am i?” before you answer the question “what do i value?,” you will get an answer you won’t like.

being rests on valuing.

one can only “be” good when one values Good.
one can only make Beauty when one values Beauty.

one can only take over the organized crime scene in boston when one values power.

are you coming to see what i mean by “value?” to value something is to love it, to make it more important than “who you are.”

of course, “who am i?” and “what do i value?” are not separable questions.

when we send “compare people” invites to 20 of our friends, or when we make grossly reductionist claims (even to ourselves) about how are friends “compare” to each other, we use those friends as what kant would call merely means to an end–the end being the unveiling of our objective selves to us, the judgment ineligible. unless you would have me believe that in sending invites to 20 of your friends, you have their interests at the front of your mind. or that you spend as long as it takes to determine which of those two of your friends has a “better personality” or is a “more valuable friend,” and you’re sure that there’s something unselfish to be gained by making such a claim.

if perhaps something more harmful than clicking on pictures and sending invites were asked of us in exchange for this unveiling, many of us would still find it a worthwhile bargain.

in fact, that is one reason why we often hurt each other. because we want to feel okay. we want license to feel acceptable, whole, happy. and we sometimes do things (to ourselves and others) that don’t feel very good/right/fair in order to be reassured of our okayness.

and that saddens me.

that is why our way of thinking about ourselves must change.

that is why we must say “i value,” such that we can be.

and when we are, we can say “sarah, you have a wonderful personality.” or “miguel, you are a good friend.” and those words will finally have meaning.

a piece of academic writing strives to make explicit to a discerning, skeptical reader exactly what is sufficient to allow that reader to understand and subscribe to the writing’s assertions.

the institution of academic writing presupposes that the words of a well-formulated argument should at least logically signify if not communicate the author’s thesis.

in the ideal situation, the writing and the reader engage in a process of thinking together. the writing thinks a thought, speaks that thought, the reader thinks the writing’s thought, responds, then the writing thinks a thought and speaks it in answer to the reader’s response (though perhaps not immediately). this process continues until the piece brings the reader’s thoughts into alignment with its own.

i reject the notion that for every thought of worth, importance and profundity, there are words that can signify that thought.

i also reject the notion that it must be, that it should be, within the context of a particular thesis, the burden of the author to bring the reader’s thoughts into accordance with the author’s thoughts.

the greatest theses, i would say the wisest (as wisdom connotes the ethical) cannot be made explicit. they can only be housed in and commanded by the minds of those who grasp them. they may not even be articulable to those who command them.

that is why the wisest ones always tailor their teachings to individuals’ needs. they understand that words are received differently by and produce different thoughts in different people, that people occupy varying positions in the spaces of wisdom, meaning and experience and thus require different images, combinations of sounds, “triggers” if you will, to bring them into a state of understanding. that is why the wisest ones gesture around and toward their theses with flexibility.

when made explicit (and “explicit” here means rendered within the confines of language, which means that the explicit is paradoxically not explicit) great theses are stripped of their full profundity, exposed, naked, insufficient, incapable of moving the “skeptical” reader:

“not two.”

“do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”

they cannot withstand interrogatories.

they are not meant to, because when articulated and put forth in writing, these theses are offered up, sacrificed to the reader. they are in effect, a sacrifice for the reader. if the reader accepts a thesis as a sacrifice for her, she will attempt to rise to it. she will accept, on faith, that she must change, and not the thesis. if she does not, she may attack it’s “logical fallacies”, blame the argumentation for not thinking its thoughts into her, or, ignore it altogether. part of the sacrifice of a great thesis is knowing it will invariably be treated this way.

i hope academic writing comes to understand its limitations.

Zen maintains a stance of “not one” and “not two,” i.e., “positionless position,” where “not two” signals a negation of the stance that divides the whole into two parts, i.e., dualism, while “not one” designates a negation of this stance when the Zen practitioner dwells in the whole as one, while suspending judgment in meditation, i.e., non-dualism. Free, bilateral movement between “not one” and “not two” characterizes Zen’s achievement of a personhood with a third perspective that cannot, however, be confined to either dualism or non-dualism (i.e., neither “not one” nor “not two”).–Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

There are ways in which difference—fundamentally, the perceived rift between Self and Other—is inescapably real. Sentience is experienced (by most[1]) as life from a standpoint, through a Self. “I” is the subject of life. “I” experiences every face around it as an object, meaning someone/something separate from it. And most people (I reserve a space for the Enlightened and possibly some who are animal) will experience the challenge of ethical action as a challenge to do justice to non-Self others, even while understanding it perhaps, as a challenge to do justice to the All. That said, there are reasons to avoid building an ethics on difference, even while in theory that ethics may radically disrupt understandings of the Self and Other as distinct.

Ziarek uses Irigaray’s theory of sexual difference to articulate one such ethics that centers difference. Ziarek calls for “respect for alterity.” The declaration of alterity is itself a thesis, positing that at a certain point the Self must embrace the impossibility of experiencing for a particular Other in a particular instance something like the intersection of empathy and understanding. The experience I describe is like empathy in that it is a kind of radical striving to visualize and feel the Self in the place of the Other, and like understanding (I will call it understanding from now on, as “understanding” in its truest, though not often used, sense is what I mean) in that this experience allows the Self to speak back ethically, to say truthfully “Yes, I hear you, but…” to the Other. In Ziarek’s model it is left to the Self to decide when the point of irreconcilability is reached, when the difference between Self and Other must be conceived of as unbridgeable. It is when the Self abandons her striving for perfect understanding that she dons “respect for alterity.” To “respect” alterity is to say “This difference I see in you is not of me, it is something other than me, and it is not experience-able by me, but…I respect its validity and equivalence to my own reality.”

There are no insurmountable, irreconcilable differences when understanding is named as the precursor to the ethical action, that action which is intended to “do good” in a specific situation, involving specific individuals and communities, selves and Others. Rather than presupposing difference, should we not assume that understanding is possible, always, and thus allow understanding to limit itself in practice while we strive, unceasingly, for perfect understanding?

Sentience provides the basis for the reconcilability of the Self and the Other. The Self is enabled to act ethically when she can imagine herself, stripped down to pure consciousness, positioned to experience the world through the body and from the standpoint of the Other, understanding the ways in which that consciousness she imagines is shaped to allow for the reality of the Other, the reality she perceives as difference. It is usually not necessary to so fully strip away those things that shape an individual consciousness—the particularities of embodiment, and experience etc.—in order to achieve understanding. The Self may approach the Other already understanding the Other’s position, and fully enabled to say “Yes, I hear you, but…”. The oppressed often approaches the oppressor in this way.[2]

To understand the Other in the way I am describing is what it means to understand the Other as fully human. I intend “human” to refer to all sentient beings, and perhaps, even the non-sentient, though I am not sure that such a clear division between sentient and non-sentient exists, if it exists at all. I use the word “human” because it connotes both the subject and object of ethical action. That is why the assertion: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people” makes sense. Oppressed individuals, while perhaps “respected” by their oppressors are never viewed by their oppressors as fully human. To oppress is in essence to construe as non-human.

Even while Ziarek acknowledges that the degree of difference in a given instance between Self and Other is unfixed and unknowable, she fails to take into account the fact that difference might be declared and perceived as such even when it is not irreconcilable, and this premature declaration is often made, because, I would suggest, a failure to engage with and understand the humanness of the Other may disguise itself as “respect for alterity.” To be “respected” without understanding is the experience of feeling unheard, misrepresented, pathologized, to be cast as other than human. Pro-slavery discourse in the American South and pro-apartheid discourse in South Africa relied on the ethical platform of “respect for alterity.” The metaphors of the lips, touch, and mucosity (authored by Irigarary and employed by Ziarek) centralize the mutual constitution of the Self and the Other, but not what they share, not their common humanness. They do not encourage understanding, though they allow for the possibility for the Self to occupy (in a different moment than the present) the same symbolic space that the Other occupies in the present.

What then, does it mean to live in a world full of humans? Beings as complex, alive and important as the Self? If understanding is the precursor to the ethical action, what is the ethical action? I embrace the Golden Rule both as a koan—a logic-impenetrable, undeconstructable wisdom put forth by many far wiser than myself[3] that I accept, on faith[4], I cannot theoretically improve upon—and as a thesis that phenomenologically demonstrates its truth. Justice and injustice are above all things experiences, and it is no great stretch to say that injustice is more commonly experienced and/or recognized than justice. To live amongst humans is quite frequently to fail to understand and appreciate the humanness of others, and consequently, to experience others’ failure to understand and appreciate one’s humanness. Injustice takes place whenever the words “I understand” are uttered untruthfully. “I understand” is uttered implicitly whenever one takes action towards or regarding another. Thus injustice takes place whenever the Self takes action (though this action may be speech, or even thought alone) regarding the Other while failing to grasp, fully, from whence came the particular ways and realities of the Other she references, whenever the Self fails to see the possibility for herself in the ways and realities of the Other. The Golden Rule is the perpetually enigmatic explication of what it means to properly honor and understand the humanness of the Other and thus I leave the Golden Rule, quite deliberately, in the place of the koan as that which must be embraced, not argued. It is the thing that I can say I am “for”…but never theorize. Conversely, I can theorize and have theorized what I am not for—injustice—and injustice is the failure to understand the Other as human.

Endnotes:

[1] Enlightenment has been theorized and described as the experience of pure sentience—dissolution in the all—the profound realization of the Oneness of all things. To live this way means to exist not as a subject, but as The Subject (anything and everything that exists), and to experience no object. Many (paradoxical as it is that I should refer to the Enlightened as individuals) have claimed enlightenment as their experience. Also, I cannot attest to the ways in which all non-human (meaning animal in this case) sentient beings live sentience. The experiences of “subject” and “object” may not apply in every instance.

[2] While it may seem that I am making clear demarcations between “oppressors” and “oppressed” here, I mean for these categories to refer to particular people in particular instances of oppression and confrontation. Individuals may be (and usually are) oppressed and oppressive in multiple ways simultaneously.

[3] As Karen Armstrong argues in The History of God, the precept of “Do unto others…” is a tenet of every great religious tradition.

[4] Here “faith” means to take an unprovable/unarguable yet great wisdom as given. Appropriate humility is the motivating force.

the culture of academia values the individual voice as the author of the new paradigm. the scholar’s worth comes from authoring newness. “newness” is the contribution the scholar makes to academia. if her contribution were not in some way new, it would not be a contribution. and truly, all that has ever been valuable has had this “newness”…even if that newness is simply a new spin on a very old argument.

but this is different from putting forth what must be put forth (however a discipline, academic community or individual scholar may define “what must be put forth”). newness follows from the value of the concepts offered, not the value from the newness.

“the academic” is a goffmanian front, an institutionalized, performative identity with a precedent and momentum. to put forth what needs to be put forth is not a practice that can be institutionalized; were it, the institution would in some measure drive the putting forth, and thus undermine the purpose of the putting forth.

and indeed, it does. the existence of the front of the “academic” precedes and drives the academic’s work. the job of the academic is foremost to put forth words, ideas and concepts, and secondarily to put forth necessary words, ideas and concepts.

in our society, the scientist must do science. the anthropologist must do anthropology. one must take on the front of the academic as an identity in order to gain access to disciplining and skills that allow one to become a valuable contributor to a field. one must say “i am an anthropologist.” the academic must develop, cultivate and publicize “her work”–her “intellectual project”–which she will strive to make distinctively her own. insodoing, she puts the question “what must i do to succeed?” before the question “what work is needed?”

this is not a phenomenon unique to academia. rather, it is symptomatic of the neo-liberal notions of “success” and the “individual.” success (financially and otherwise) is demanded of the individual in the neo-liberal context.

can academia exist any other way?

as long as trades and egos exist i don’t know that the manifest telos of academia can ever truly be the production of valuable knowledge, whatever academics may say. i don’t know that it needs to be either in order to produce valuable knowledge. as many authors have said, the key to writing well is to write. and at least in my understanding, what “must be put forth” often must be put forth because of the lack of insightfulness in the theorizing of others. hence the culture of academia to some extent produces words, concepts and ideas of value in the way that capitalism produces “quality” goods; competition encourages quality (or that’s the argument. really…competition encourages winning.).

but i do believe scholars can take steps (and hopefully sway others through their actions) to create a different academic culture through rejecting “due credit.” something as simple as writing under a pseudonym makes a powerful statement about what is important. the jabbawockeez, blue man group and slipknot (to differing degrees) have put their art before their egos through the practice of wearing masks/anonymizing make-up during their performances, and they have changed how people think about celebrity and art.

there is no reason why academics could not in some instances put their own names and faces after their work. blogging could be one of those instances. there could be academic journals in which pieces are published under pseudonyms only. scholars could perhaps build their public careers first and then blog or write anonymously.

this would not mean speaking from a disembodied, unsituated place. nor would it mean lying about oneself or hiding behind anonymity.

it is a culturally symbolic position to take. and one that should not be imposed but adopted wholeheartedly.

just as bell hooks’ writing under “bell hooks” was a culturally symbolic position to take.

it is symbolically stating one’s dedication to the production of important ideas over and above ambition.

in time, i imagine that such a move could lose its symbolic potency. but in this moment, it would be potent and called for.

to imagine is to construct in one’s mind. there is always a kind of separation of the imaginer from the imagined, in the way that sometimes, when one is dreaming, the dreamer observes the dream.

absolute empathy/understanding can only take place in the space before imagination, a space of pure feeling. that absolute empathy/understanding ceases to be empathy/understanding (which requires a subject and object) because it has become Enlightenment.

imagination, however, is the tool by which we move our pre-imagined understandings closer to that absolute.

language provides a good example. i am not fluent in french, yet i know some french words.

when i hear “avec” i know it means “with.”
when i hear “peut-être” i know it means “maybe.”
when i hear “je suis” i know it means “i am.”

but “with” is transparent to me, while “avec” is mediated, cloudy.

when i draw on the word “with,” i experience the word as though it does not symbolize the meaning of “with”…rather, the meaning and the word are one.

i understand “avec” by way of analogy, through its relationship to “with.” i say to myself “‘avec’ connects to the same meaning in the head of someone who speaks french that ‘with’ connects to in mine.” this is the significance of saying “‘avec’ means ‘with.’” if i were fluent in french i could still say, “‘avec’ means ‘with.’” but i could just as truthfully say “‘avec’ means ‘avec’.”

when i consider the president, or my mother, or the chinese, or the french, or billerica memorial high school students, or eddie izzard, or the protagonist in a movie i’m watching, or one of my friends (and i empathize with these people to widely varying degrees), i understand them as people through analogy, through their relationship to me. and conversely, i understand myself as a person through my relationship to them.

i seem to exist looking out at/touching the world through a body. when i type, i cannot see my own face. i look down at my hands. i will sometimes walk by a mirror and feel stunned by my own image. i do not imagine myself as a face. yet a face, i have…as the mirror reminds me. often, when i think, i do not say to myself “i am thinking”…i simply think. similarly, i feel–forces and chemicals in me move–before i say “i am feeling (anger, joy, disgust etc.)” yet there is never a time when i find myself looking down at another person’s typing hands, through their eyes. when i consider other people, i imagine their faces. when eddie izzard says “i am thinking”, i imagine that what he calls “thinking” must refer to something in him that is like what i have learned to call “thinking” in myself. i imagine talking to others, or perhaps i practice what has so often been called empathy: i “imagine myself in their shoes.”

that is why “thinking” means something different in each of the following sentences:

“eddie izzard is thinking.”
“i am thinking.”

that is why “a person” means something different in each of the following sentences:

“he is a person.”
“i am a person.”

for those of us who are fluent in english and not french: “[he is] a person” is to “avec” as “[i am ] a person” is to “with.”

i realize that other people must similarly imagine me in this way. that to everyone except me, i am a face. i am an Other.

intellectually, i understand that others’ “with” is actually “avec.” intellectually, i understand that others may look down at their own hands. but all of this takes place in the realm of imagination.

i am the observer and interpreter.

i am the referent.

in the world as it is i am the referent and i am not. we are all referents. we are separate and we are not. to truly honor and do justice to Others, i must strive, asymptotically, for fluency, for feeling, for pre-imagined appreciation of the meaning literally behind their faces, which i imagine (and i use the word deliberately) will close the gap that separates me from all others.

i (insofar as “i” exist) must strive to close the space between “[he is] a person” and “[i am ] a person.”

There exists an ocularcentric focus on the visual image of the anorexic body, to the exclusion of the anorexic body as lived, in popular, medical and feminist discourses. This focus is fueled by a desire to witness the Otherness of the anorexic body that continually reinscribes anorexic subjects as strange, pathological and other-than-human. In this thesis I work from the premises that the behavior of food refusal and the physical state of emaciation are dissociable, and that the relationship between anorexia and emaciation is neither predetermined nor natural. Through exploring the discursive construction of “the anorexic body” in three historical time periods, I demonstrate how the provocativeness of the image of emaciation has played an important role in the solidification of the diagnostic criteria of anorexia nervosa, and how anorexics’ emaciation has been and continues to be pointed to as the emblem of anorexic illness, and in turn, Otherness.

In Chapter 1, I locate the beginning of the relationship between anorexia nervosa and emaciation in the medical debates of the 1870s surrounding the emergent condition of “anorexia” amongst young women. English physician Sir Wiliam Gull, seeking to gain the prestige associated with discovering a new illness, sought to establish anorexia nervosa as a new category of disease. His chief task in achieving this end was to convince his peers that anorexia nervosa was an illness distinct from hysteria. I argue that Gull successfully used the image of the emaciated anorexic to convince his peers that “anorexia nervosa” was an illness more akin to consumption than hysteria, and therefore an illness separate from hysteria and worthy of its own diagnosis. As a result of Gull’s efforts, emaciation became the enduring central symptom of anorexia nervosa. In Chapter 2 I move from the 1870s to the 1970s, at which point discussions of anorexia nervosa moved from the exclusive realm of medical discourse to popular discourse. I argue that an Otherization of “the anorexic,” grounded in “the anorexic’s” visible emaciation, was transferred from medical discourse to popular discourse. Finally, in Chapter 3, I look at the current moment. Anorexics are for the first time able to represent themselves on a massive scale through pro-anorexia websites, speaking from the position that has traditionally been talked about as other than the speaker in popular, medical and feminist discourses on anorexia. However I conclude that in pro-ana websites, the image of the archetypal anorexic body—which is a sexed, raced, classed and gendered body—represents the ideal pro-ana communities choose to put forth, eclipsing rather than revealing the diversity of experiences of eating disordered people. I end with the hope that we may strive to look beyond the visual in the study of anorexia nervosa and that we may aim to appreciate that severe pain and illness are often not readable on the visible surface of the body.

as donna haraway reminds us, we are all cyborgs now. when i put words on this screen i do not think about making them appear. my fingers find their ways not even lagging behind the words as i articulate them mentally. my thoughts are in fact made possible by the ways the words appear on this screen, the rapidity with which i can make changes to those words…the words have a lightness unlike ink on a page. i do not commit to screen words as quickly, and i am not as loath to scratch them out, for fear of marring the beauty of a perfect page.

thich nhat hanh explains that Christ aimed to shake his disciples into awareness by saying to them “this is my body you eat. this is my blood you drink.” what are Christ’s words but a koan, begging those who receive the Eucharist to allow themselves to be overcome by the question: “what is a body?”

like haraway, and like Christ, i find it valuable to talk about the interbeing of individual bodies, and in effect, the non-existence of the individual body, by talking about the reality of the body.

…

what, i ask, is a heart?

…

we all know it is real enough

when i say the word

“heart”

alone…not de-contextualized, but without context…i invoke the multiple meanings of this word simultaneously–an internal organ that sustains and counts out life, an imagined organ of feeling or caring or loving, the center or “core” (from the French “coeur”) of a thing–and the word is the heart of “heart.” the word is more than a symbol. and it is even more than a concept. it is just…”heart.”

…

when people touch my heart, i create.

over the years, i have made many beautiful things, with such care, for many people. for that reason i own almost none of the pieces of artwork i have crafted, labored over…called “done.”

the feelings in my artwork are always honest and inviolable. i never regret laboring long over a piece or giving it to the person for whom i crafted it. but i have noticed that i become very tired and sad as i give away my heart, or pieces of it, again, and again. even as i think and write the word “heart” here, my chest becomes heavy and tight. these overlapping meanings of “heart” are not a coincidence…they describe the truth as they create the truth…bridges amongst an imagined core, an imagined source of feeling, an organ in the chest, and physical sensation…

this weekend i have the chance to display my artwork at western ave studios open studio, but i have nothing to show. because it is gone and i do not know when i will see any of it again. i made a ruby ring. the ruby was surrounded by flames of brass, covering a silver background. i gave it to a man eight years ago. i haven’t seen it since. i’ve seen him once. i made a silver ring, a design inspired by a ring from the silmarillion, for my father…my masterpiece. lost in london seven years ago. three necklaces gone. three people gone. a staff, made with such love, i will never see again. i don’t know how many drawings.

the journal i painted more recently is out there…and i am waiting for it to return.

i send pieces of my heart out in this way, because it is the purest me. the core of me. and it feels natural. it is a beautiful, naked, fragile act of faith. my art says: “will you be kind and thoughtful enough to cherish me, though it is easy to forget me?”

when i receive nothing to fill the empty spots i feel just a little weakened and betrayed.

my chest tightens and becomes heavy. as it is now.

thankfully, over the last ten years, i have learned to be my own strength, to cherish and appreciate myself, to replenish, calm and heal my heart.

my heart filled by (an)other(s)…truly…not a mirage: it doesn’t make life better, worse, or more interesting. but it does make me cry.

· my thoughts are liquid metal flowing unto the brink of articulation; that articulation is a front of super-cooled liquid nitrogen.  my thoughts freeze when they meet this front, becoming a solid mass seemingly without intricacies to be explored.  just solid and simple.  that is why my theses so frequently sound solid, simple and not worth-saying.  this mass is meant to be shattered.  dropped onto the pavement from 50 stories.  each fragment in turn is meant to be broken open.  and the fragments of fragments of fragments.  many fractals at once showcase their infinite intricacy.  but the fractals that are my thoughts do not.  their infinite intricacy must be explored to be appreciated, and explored on faith, like reaching for the other side of the wardrobe to narnia for the first time…reaching for the back of a wardrobe that isn’t there.

o that i could have chosen another metaphor that “logically signifies” the nature of my thoughts as well as my liquid metal metaphor does, and that i could have eschewed metaphor altogether in my explanation highlight the extent to which the “meanings” of words exist beyond what they “signify.”  argument is not all about, or even mostly about syllogism, logical nakedness.  it is about feelings and images that grab us for reasons we do not understand, though we command them, make use of them.  we are moved by the sensorial experience of ideas…not just their content.  in fact, the experience of the idea and the content of the idea are not distinct.  (wake up ye academia).

· there is a feeling that tells me that “beautiful” and “improbable” are somehow related.

sometimes, if we’re really listening, and we want to communicate what we hear honestly, we have to abandon the usual words…

these words have a gravitational pull–as simone weil defines gravity–drawing us to them when we do not have the energy to fight the pull.

too much of the language that issues from us is mimesis and performance…because we believe that the meaningfulness of the communication lies in the words…

words like “Enlightenment”

and “Truth”

and “God”

and “in love”

…words that often appear next to superlatives of various kinds–important, holy, meaningful.  these words are supposed to have energy. we sometimes choose these words because we experience things that are important, holy, meaningful…and we hang tight to that “supposed to” out of laziness.

we get lazy and dishonest.

for that reason, we sometimes feel just the smallest fear that we might be lying about what we see, feel, experience.

listening more carefully to the behavior and magnitude of our fear, especially when it is small enough to be almost unrecognizable as fear, could help.

what is essential and inessential to the thingness of the thing?  to know the answer…i listen to and engage with the thing…without any desire to make it into what it is not, to possess it or use it solely to demonstrate something about myself.

over time, i develop ever more artful hypotheses of the thing’s essential and inessential components.

and i’m never outside of the feeling of swelling Beautifulness because i’ve arrived at a place of appreciating all things as living out their suchnesses perfectly…never failing.

no piece of art fails.  each speaks equally of the human experience, and pain, and the possible, and the Beautiful and love…if we read them in this way.  those pieces of art we consider “great” do a lot of the work of listening.  they are constructed so as to be read in the light of profundity.

likewise no human being fails to be a human being.

how is this possible?  i conceptualize it in this way:

all things are using, facilitating, expending energy.  time, being and energy are, in my understanding, all one.   every moment, all things in the universe are being what they are; that can be thought of both as the passing of time and as the expenditure of energy.  human beings think, feel, perceive every moment.  and we must each make decisions about how to use our energy to fill the spaces of thinking and feeling and communicating because time limits our options.  we have only so many opportunities to notice, to say, to explore our feelings.  where we put our energies not only reflects but actively creates our suchnesses.

i come to appreciate others so much more, and so much more rightly, when i realize that in the time that has passed, during which i have grown, or thought about a thing, or authored certain words, they have been toiling internally and externally as much as i have…even if they choose to meditate on seemingly frivolous things.  the frivolity itself is held in place by the way time-energies are put to use.

i am not good at guitar, because i have not used my time-energy to explore the guitar.

i am good at thinking, because i have used my time-energy to explore thinking.

my friend joe uses his time-energy to stay perfectly in a process-moment-event.  i use mine to synthesize what i know about that process-moment-event with what i know about everything…carried along on a river of realizations.  as time passes, we can become farther and farther away from each other in our thoughts…but neither of us mind or find it alienating.  because we know how the other person is, in light of that process-moment-event, using his/her time-energy.  and frequently, we each take care to change our instinctual ways of being to accommodate the other’s.  i struggle to stay perfectly in that process-moment-event.  he struggles to hear me and join me in moving away from it, upward, at an exponential rate.

in the past i found it very hard to simultaneously become liked by everyone and fully myself.  many anorexics struggle in how to use their time-energy: whether it should go towards learning how to be “the perfect anorexic,” or whether it should be used to seek healing.

simply put, there is always tension in us when we consider how our time-energy should be spent…this tension is the essence of being human, i think.

and then there is the outcome…our time is spent, and spent in particular ways…some of which we do not ever recognize but which nevertheless constitute us.

we can only do so much at once.  and in my experience, we cannot and do not shift states without transformation.  we have to travel, build, arrive at places, new states of being.  which requires that we consciously or subconsciously put our thoughts and feelings to the uses of learning and implementing our knowledge.  sometimes it seems that life–those seeming things “not us”–does a lot of the work of introducing change and newness to catalyze our movements into new ways of being.  but that is an illusion.  we are always the ones seeing or not seeing the newness, embracing or not embracing it.

and whether we spend all of our lives sitting, in one place, inert, or growing unfathomably quickly each second, we live and with the same magnitude of living.  we exist precisely the same amount always.