Silenced

I found this beautiful article, the subject of which encapsulated so much of what is dear to me and my life's pursuit, about men held in solitary confinement. The article was a photo exposition of these men, as they were being granted the chance to be photographed for the first time in years - an odd concept for most of us these days, so accustomed to an endless stream of photographs as we are, and over-saturated by them. It is truly a beautiful idea, and these men gave the most incredible verbal accompaniments to their experiences - words that put the greatest existentialist philosophers to shame, words that elicited the most dire and true emotions that most of us never allow ourselves to feel. I was so happy for the opportunity to to publicize their words, spread the genuineness and great exposition of emotion by these men, on this blog.

I had so enjoyed promoting that wonderful article, and the words of the men therein - such important messages to spread to the world - some of the most real words most people will ever hear - those men telling their incredible stories.

I want to take the opportunity to apologize to the men of the article. I tried to spread your stories, your struggles. But yours was demanded to be silenced.

Ruth Gwily

This is the most real and painful art + writing I have ever seen. Illustrations must be observed in coordination with titles for full effect. I bow down to this woman's ability to not only artistically capture the essence of faces, and of imagery...But more so, just to go to these places.

www.ruthgwily.com/illustrations.html

Here are a few of the most poignant examples (to me):

"Abusive prison ward for the mentally ill"

 

"Open adoption - the adopted child stays in touch with his biological mother"

"Criminal kids practise creative writing, as therapy"

"Pro anorexia blogs on the internet"

"the impossibility of love that makes it possible"

"How children destroys marriage"

This one is the most frightening, to me personally:

" 'vacancy' a horror film"

It just seems like she is willing to explore and lay bare some of the most sensitive subjects of our time, ones that most people won't even bring up in conversation because it makes most everyone around too uncomfortable. 

That strong suggestion in the art work itself, coupled with the unwithholding titles that drive the depiction home, it's just, so bold and so real, and so hard. Like "How children destroy marriage" - no one wants to fucking say that. 

I appreciate the most the rare things in life I encounter that keep me real, and keep me most true to my 12 year old to 17 year old self - the one who would not compromise authenticity for anything.

Comment asking about format/blog template

Someone sent me a comment asking what template I am using for this blog. My apologies I accidentally deleted it. I'm just using one of the basic pre-made blogger templates, in the "Simple" category, and I've  gone to the 'Layout' section just above the 'Template' selection option and added things as blogger allows for. Feel free to ask me again if that doesn't answer your question.

Warsan Shire

"Not everyone is okay with living like an open wound. But the thing about open wounds is that, well, you aren’t ignoring it, your healing, the fresh air can get to it. It’s honest. You aren’t hiding who you are. You aren’t rotting. People can give you advice on how to heal without scarring badly. But on the other hand there are some people who’ll feel uncomfortable around you. Some will even point and laugh. But we all have wounds. "

...And there are those poets - few and far between - who make you and your writing feel so small because yours pales in comparison, but make your heart and your spirit swell and soothed, because she let unarticulated emotions inside of you be okay in her expression of how she has felt them too.

To Be Vulnerable And Fearless: An Interview with Writer Warsan Shire

This reading stopped me (below). Made me pull out my own guts and heart and made me want to re-comit to my teenage self that swore she would never, ever be dishonest with herself. It reminded me that I have some recovering to do.

For Women Who Are 'Difficult' To Love

The Most Honest Love Letter I've Ever Written

You are welcome
And wanted
At any hour of the night or morning
to join my in sleep.
or love expression of any kind.

But, I don't know about you.

Sleep and gentle love is what I need and
NEED TO GIVE.

Warm by my side with your beautiful body
And I will warm you thrice over with mine.

I love you. I want you.

I know that I am not all that you need
But right now, I am here. And I need you, too.

And I want to hold you, and love you
an take care of that part of your soul
of which I am capable

Maybe that's not something that will last for long

So let me love you the way I know how

while you still let me.

Hope for new life

"You fucking moron."

"Showing your true colors."

Then break the lock on my door.



The move is going really well so far.

More Comments on Ted Hughes' letter

I used to live by those kind of thoughts. Who are we now?

This is a crappily, but heartfully written excerpt from an essay from my Philosophy of Society class at UC Berkeley, exactly on this subject:

"To lend further support to this idea that it is not so simple as “opting out”, imagine the following: the typical picture of “success” as defined by someone living in America today, in a place like San Francisco, LA, New York, or any major city you would like, is a man, say his name is Brad. He’s a lawyer, he’s married with two kids, he goes to the gym three days a week, doesn’t drink too much, eats healthily, deals with any emotional problems by visiting a therapist weekly, considers himself a member of the Democratic Party, has the neighbors over for dinner now and then, goes to visit his family on holidays, goes to church every so often, owns his own house, attends his son’s soccer games, etc. Each aspect of this picture of “success” can be categorized as belonging to this or that social institution, marriage, property ownership, work, education religion, family, etc. Here is what is most interesting about all this: strip his participation in all these institutions away, and who is Brad? Whose thoughts does he think all day long? Thoughts for his law firm or his kids’ school, his mom, what he’s going to buy his wife for Valentine’s Day, what his wife should cook for dinner for the neighbors coming over Tuesday night, when he’ll have time to make it to the gym this week. As Durkheim points out in “Social Facts”, “most of our ideas and our tendencies are not developed by ourselves but come to us from without.” (p.38, Reader). When one is tempted to argue this and say that Brad chooses to be a part of all these things, one realizes that not choosing such things involves certain consequences.

Does anyone in this position have the time to think his own thoughts, and have any kind of identity outside of the social roles he plays? In order to make this possible say we subtract one aspect of Brad’s life so he has more time to contemplate his inner self, his desires and beliefs apart from those pertaining to his social obligations. Let us subtract work, which is usually the part of present-day life that takes up the most of one’s time and energy. In this case Brad would not be able to pay the mortgage on his house, feed his kids, send them to school, or pay his taxes, among many other things. He is likely to be looked down upon by his friends and have to live off unemployment, or become a criminal to maintain any kind of livelihood. Whatever might be one’s reasons for wanting to opt out (since wanting to “discover oneself” is just an example), it is easy enough to see that people continue to participate in social institutions because there are severe consequences to behaving otherwise. The situation is especially significant if Brad is unhappy, because in essence he is trapped as a result of the unfavorable consequences that would occur, should he step outside his social roles. Brad might be happy, in which case this could be attributable to a lifetime of exposure to specific definitions of success which he believes himself to have fulfilled. Consequently he is on the receiving end of what Searle refers to as “positive power” generated by institutions, or under the illusion that he experiences freedom, and that he uses this freedom to cultivate all the various aspects of his life. I will revisit the idea of “illusions” further on.

To make another point about positive power, for every one person who enjoys such positive power, there are many more on the receiving end of negative power. Examples of such cases are felons, drug addicts, people who are homeless or in poverty etc. These are perfect examples of people who have “opted out” of this or that institution, say the law as in the case of criminals, and as a result they are much restricted as far as advancing or fulfilling typical definitions of “success” in society. To take even another example consider the case of someone who chooses not to pursue a college education because he or she is aware of the ability institutions have to regulate over the minds of individuals, and furthermore he or she believes that to become college educated is just to become trained to think the way the government wants people to think, to learn the things the government wants people to learn, or as Durkheim puts it:

Considering the facts as they are and have always been, it becomes immediately evident that all education is a continuous effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling, and acting which he could not have arrived at spontaneously…the aim of education is, precisely, the socialization of the human being. (italics added) (p. 38)

In order to refrain from acting contrary to one’s beliefs, one might opt out of education and as a result be extremely limited as to job possibilities, and be likely to experience chagrin from the rest of society. This is yet another situation in which to “opt out” is NOT in one’s best interest.

In chapter 4 of The Construction, Searle states

…we are in a state of nature all the time, but the state of nature is precisely one in which people do in fact accept systems of constitutive rules, at least nearly all the time. (p. 91)

Indeed this is true but it only describes the surface. What is taking place on a deeper level is much more complicated, and it is much more likely that what you have in society is not a group of people happily accepting and recreating the conditions being handed down to them from past generations, but rather on the one hand a people under the illusion that there is nothing wrong with accepting things as they are (such as the women in Searle’s story) and on the other, people who accept things as they are only because the alternative is likely to be worse. Durkhiem points out the related fact that the illusion of control and freedom is maintained precisely up until the point that one attempts resistance: “We are then victims of the illusion of having ourselves created that which actually forced itself from without.” (p. 38)

What is particularly disturbing about whole the situation is that most people are too afraid to try to resist at all. Allow me to use myself as an example. There are times I think that I would love to drop out of school, quit my job, stop paying my rent, and do whatever I want, go wherever I please, think whatever I want, manifest whatever ideas I desire. But again, there would be consequences. I would be looked down upon by my family who expects me to finish college and go to graduate school, have a family and get a “good” job. I would be even less likely to get a job than I am with a completed BA in Philosophy.

Mr. Searle seems to be fond of “tests” for certain facts and situations. Consider the following: when you ask the question, “who might people be if they could do whatever they wanted?” and realize that the answer would be quite different from a description of who people are as defined by their social roles and their participation in societal institutions, you realize the extent to which such institutions are in fact constraining rather than empowering. Once again, Durkhiem’s point, that the illusion of empowerment and control is maintained until one attempts to resist, is relevant. Hence, there are very good reasons, particularly concerning consequences (whether they be from the government or one’s family or social circles) for why people do not simply “opt out” of the parts of society that are contrary to their belief systems or that are not in their interest to be a part of."

Like A Mighty River

I used to write in the spirit of this all the time. What happened to me? What happened to us?

I wish I could get this whole fucking thing tattooed on myself.

"It's something people don't discuss, because it's something most people are aware of only as a general crisis of sense of inadequacy, or helpless dependence, or pointless loneliness, or a sense of not having a strong enough ego to meet and master inner storms that come from an unexpected angle. But not many people realise that it is, in fact, the suffering of the child inside them. Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it. So everybody develops a whole armour of secondary self, the artificially constructed being that deals with the outer world, and the crush of circumstances. And when we meet people this is what we usually meet. And if this is the only part of them we meet we're likely to get a rough time, and to end up making 'no contact'. But when you develop a strong divining sense for the child behind that armour, and you make your dealings and negotiations only with that child, you find that everybody becomes, in a way, like your own child. It's an intangible thing. But they too sense when that is what you are appealing to, and they respond with an impulse of real life, you get a little flash of the essential person, which is the child. Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It's been protected by the efficient armour, it's never participated in life, it's never been exposed to living and to managing the person's affairs, it's never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it's never properly lived. That's how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced. Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim. And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It's their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can't understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That's the carrier of all the living qualities. It's the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn't come out of that creature isn't worth having, or it's worth having only as a tool—for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful. So there it is. And the sense of itself, in that little being, at its core, is what it always was. But since that artificial secondary self took over the control of life around the age of eight, and relegated the real, vulnerable, supersensitive, suffering self back into its nursery, it has lacked training, this inner prisoner. And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears. And yet that's the moment it wants. That's where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that's where it calls up its own resources—not artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy. That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you've gone a few weeks and haven't felt that awful struggle of your childish self—struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence—you'll know you've gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you've gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

...

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river."

- Ted Hughes, in a letter to his son. 

Source: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/09/live-like-mighty-river.html

Soothing

Emotional life is probably the most significantly live part of my experience of life. I admit, it is a limited sphere of all of those available, and dangerous to live in all of the time, but it is where I live most of the time, the sphere that demands the most of my attention, the one i find the most important.

My heart - our current metaphor for the seat of the emotions (for some ancient cultures, it was the stomach) - as of late, has felt askew. Off. In a grate state of dis-ease. And that is a much less fractured way to put it, than that which would truly reflect what this has been feeling like. I wrote to a dear friend today, that the number of enchanted, pure, and solid things seems to disappear and decrease as we get older, either because those things fall off their pedestals, or they leave our lives, either by death or some other route.

I talked on the phone with Mom today. It began as a conversation that didn't have to do with the external circumstances of either of our lives; it was about our little cat, Pepper, who died today. I grew up with her, and when I moved out she became my Mom's cat. She was our odd, sweet, quirky, little treasure. Every time I came home she would resume her habit of following me everywhere I went around the house, and knocking my pens off my desk, or rolling over onto my homework and looking up at me with darling, mischievous eyes. I felt the only person I really had in my life to commiserate about her death properly with was, my mom. So, I cried, and she soothed, as a mother does.

What I will say, is, something, in my heart, that has felt broken and wrong for several years, now feels, not mended, but, soothed. Like there has been a few steps in the right direction, in the right way. When we got off the phone, I looked up at the sky and said a modest "thank you". What I felt like doing as I let the sensation spread from my heart to the rest of my body, was cry out loud to the heavens like a person in love wanting to declare their love to the world.

Rest in Peace little Pepper-cat.

Why

Because all our insecurities came to the surface. Because we allowed our selves to get in the way of eachother.

Because we weren't strong enough.