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Sep. 3rd, 2008 08:26 pmWhy the fuck is pleasure so hard, so complicated? It should be the simplest, most abundant thing in the world; it's everywhere you turn.
It's not bodies. Correction: it's not the bodies of others. Every body is is a delightful, confusing combination of the warmly familiar and the wholly alien, but you know that, you anticipate that, fuck, you enjoy that.
It's not in your body, either, or at least not in the obvious sense. Even if you found a way to actualize an Emersonian perspective on the physical self, you'd still be on hooks, because where there is awareness, there is space, and in that space complication and externalities intrude, but without awareness, there's no pleasure.
It's not just roles and identities, either; that's a comfortable bit of chaff most don't want to engage the effort to push past, and it makes you comfortably complacent in your unsustainable frustration and self punishment. Sure, that's a part of the issue, but really, it's more primal than that, you think, but you're not sure, and at least historically, you've been reluctant to look at that too closely.
But it's about information, ultimately, isn't it? Or, about meaning: that's more accurate. It's about contested meaning, about sustainable meaning, about definitional boundaries and their permeability, about dissolution and synergy at the same time, but even that's just the most recent layer of deflection.
It's about trust. Not ultimately of others, but of self. What the fuck, how did we get here? It's the postmodern condition, this lack of trust, but really it's more Modern, but that doesn't help you. Distrust of institutions is just common sense, but it doesn't protect you from the colonial voices, those presences that tell you you're everything bad they've ever said, that you've ever been afraid of, those fucking voices that never go away. If you're bad, then the things unique to you are bad, aren't they? Particularly the things that feel surreptitiously good, the things that are poisoned by conventional contagion, the things that would be amoral if not for precocity and defenseless awareness.
But even that's wrong, or not right enough. It's fear, really, fear of letting go, fear of the trust that a reclamation of self is possible, is sustainable, that pleasure can be engaged but in that ultimate moment of dissolution you could well be defenseless rather than radiantly powerful.
It's the fear of being that powerful.
Fucking stupid, get over yourself already. All sorts of good things are waiting, but you're too fucking scared to jump, and too stubborn to back up.
Make a damned decision.
It's not bodies. Correction: it's not the bodies of others. Every body is is a delightful, confusing combination of the warmly familiar and the wholly alien, but you know that, you anticipate that, fuck, you enjoy that.
It's not in your body, either, or at least not in the obvious sense. Even if you found a way to actualize an Emersonian perspective on the physical self, you'd still be on hooks, because where there is awareness, there is space, and in that space complication and externalities intrude, but without awareness, there's no pleasure.
It's not just roles and identities, either; that's a comfortable bit of chaff most don't want to engage the effort to push past, and it makes you comfortably complacent in your unsustainable frustration and self punishment. Sure, that's a part of the issue, but really, it's more primal than that, you think, but you're not sure, and at least historically, you've been reluctant to look at that too closely.
But it's about information, ultimately, isn't it? Or, about meaning: that's more accurate. It's about contested meaning, about sustainable meaning, about definitional boundaries and their permeability, about dissolution and synergy at the same time, but even that's just the most recent layer of deflection.
It's about trust. Not ultimately of others, but of self. What the fuck, how did we get here? It's the postmodern condition, this lack of trust, but really it's more Modern, but that doesn't help you. Distrust of institutions is just common sense, but it doesn't protect you from the colonial voices, those presences that tell you you're everything bad they've ever said, that you've ever been afraid of, those fucking voices that never go away. If you're bad, then the things unique to you are bad, aren't they? Particularly the things that feel surreptitiously good, the things that are poisoned by conventional contagion, the things that would be amoral if not for precocity and defenseless awareness.
But even that's wrong, or not right enough. It's fear, really, fear of letting go, fear of the trust that a reclamation of self is possible, is sustainable, that pleasure can be engaged but in that ultimate moment of dissolution you could well be defenseless rather than radiantly powerful.
It's the fear of being that powerful.
Fucking stupid, get over yourself already. All sorts of good things are waiting, but you're too fucking scared to jump, and too stubborn to back up.
Make a damned decision.
