And Now for Something Completely Different

I promise myself I'm going to do this kinda thing all the time. I promise I am going to actually write. What I currently do (read all those enviro posts) is reflect-synthesize-illuminate via the medium of writing. In actual fact, with that form of communication, the writing itself is just pro forma, sometimes very tedious and chore-like, more often fairly neutral, other times at least distracting.

But I don't actually write. I type pre-formed words and ideas in my head. Nothing really comes out in the typing that actually surprises me.

So then I go through a insurrection where I claim I will write. And this is the beginning of that counterinsurgency.

I randomly found my way (via the The Washingpost) to a sex column for mommies. Now given I'm not: female, nor hence a mother, nor at this time sexually active, you may be wondering why on earth I would do such a thing.

All I can say is I'm very intrigued to study the foreign territory of the female psyche. Its like reconnoitering in the Malay jungles on some expeditionary force. Who the hell knows what we're going to encounter.

She's very good, this writer (Heidi Raykeil). She has a young daugher and is chronicling the attempt to revive her libido post-childbirth. This passage in particular caught my attention:


From Confessions of a Naughty Mommy

When my daughter was a little over a year old, she made her first real joke; she grabbed my boob in her chubby paws, grinned hugely and announced, "Mine!"...
The problem is, in my daughter's first devil-inspired try at humor she got it right. Contrary to what my husband might hope for, my breasts do belong to her. And that's just the beginning. My heart, my attention, my devotion, my very most important reason for living now all also belong to her. It is her scent I inhale at night. It is her skin I polish with kisses. It is her body I know better than my husband's now, better than my own.

It got me thinking of the future time in which I will be superseded by my (then) wife's affection for our child(ren). Obviously that is a bit of a way off, but all things remaining (more or less) on track it will occur.

Her words remind me not to take so personally Chloe's devouring love for me. Its innate to her being and eventually the alleigance will be transferred to the youngling. She has an acute case of babylust--for those of you who don't know what that is, all I can as an outsider is that women want to eat babies. [To be pulled back philospoher for a moment: cannibalism is just a destructive-gruesome way of enacing a basic spiritual desire: to be one, bodily, with another. This is my Body, This is My Blood, Take Eat Me, Drink My Blood....]

Now they aren't going to literally act on this eat-baby desire, but its so visceral you can see it in their eyes. Its well documented by Heidi. She's got the bug too. If I were an evolutionary biologist, I might say that behavior was selected by nature to make sure the offspring actually live--as Gallagher aptly put it, "God made babies so cute so we wouldn't kill them." The biological urge to protection and affection working to offset the stressors (dare I say downsides) of child rearing.

I'm all for kids, I love them, and God knows if threatened I wouldn't hesitate to unleash my ancient, dark, male aggressivity and decapitate (if necessary) someone to protect them. Still its not the same. It doesn't have that intensity, that need Heidi articulates--that has been echoed by my conversations with other female friends of mine.

And it's nothing personal against Chloe. If I have to learn to accept that for a certain time I will the locus of most of her devouring love and then later will not (and perhaps at a later time to be re-inserted...no pun intended), then I should just as much learn it is not a calculated betrayal on her part.

Although, in all fairness, I won't make any predictions as to this scenario playing out full-bore, given that I normally think she has a stronger sex drive than me. Maybe that won't change.

But either way, I will have to decrease, so the young can increase.

Its been roughly 13 months now since we've been separated physically, since I had to leave Canada because of losing my VISA. I visited her once in Canada for a week (last March for her b-day), and she came to visit here in the States once for a week (last July). That adds up to a total of being in actual physical contact for 14 days. We have also kept religiously to once a week phone calls. If we had been more up on this long distance thing from January '05 to say May-June when she finished her time as a single mom (excuse me, nannying) we could have splurged for some comp. cams and actually looked at each other. Now that's in Australia, that boat has sailed.

Part of the reason for the long essayed themed posts--as confessed in one of them if I recall--is that they keep my mind off the all pervading loneliness. Just typing that word brings the sorrow back. I purposely try to plan my day (after work) with the gym, writing, reading, and watching films if I have to, in order to stem the tide of even five minutes alone without doing anything.

Because the minute that happens, its emotional curtains. The ever-lingering thought of how I am dying on the inside--no Chloe and no studies/seminary, the two strands of my Soul's DNA--how can I make it any longer, even a day, much less another 7 or 8 months? How if I were a real man, and had made real money and was not a loser and failure, I would have enough sheckels to go visit her.

While those two strands--the future of being disconnected daddy and the current girlfriendless dude--may seem unrelated, the link for me is what is left for me alone in the absence.

In the future daddy scenario, I will likely be a profesor and clergyman. I will, like I always do focus so much of my energy and attention to the world of thought. That will be my mainstay, my go to approach, my mission.

But that, as I learn time and time again, wears off. It goes through phases--see opening paragraph.

And then what is left in that VOID to keep me connected, to keep me related?

Someone once told me that everything is Content, Context, and Process. I am a man of the Cs, Content and Context. I am not into Process--that is what I meant by the fact that I don't write, I content-dump under the rubric of so-called writing.

I love to give speeches and sermons, but not interact with folks afterwards.

Its not interaction with people per se that's the issue. In all sorts of situations, I'm a friendly open fellow. Probably a tad mysterious, but generally a good listener, thoughtful, with a playful sense of humor.

Its the scenario of becoming part of a group, set out to achieve a goal, where I falter, particulary when people look to me to lead.

That is what process is about. Translation, accepting and embracing the world of Brutality. I can't do that. Not because I'm particularly holy, too kind or humble, but because I'm embarrassed and self-conscious.

I'm not particularly nervous of becoming anti-establishment, questioning both the establishment and the naive utopian revolutionaries of our day, being surveilled, and eventually being rubbed out. That formula has been repeated and memorialized in my tradition and is therefore inherent to my psyche, if the calling is there. Red martyrdom.

At least in the good ol' days (like Rome or today in the 3rd World), Empire would do its deed. At least there is unambiguous finality to martyrdom.

If I were being cynical, I would say that if that ever were to happen, she would have the kids. If I were being super cynical, I would say she can find herself young lovers.

Nowadays, in our scrubbed down, antiseptic realm, you dont' get martryed. The system is far too subtle and manipulative for such a one-time display. It reduces you to a laughingstock. You don't get martryed, you end up on Oprah or fucking Larry King Live. The media is to prophets what Bob Barker is to the feline population: a scalpel ready to spade.

I'd rather be shot in the head than a "religious" celebrity. In fact, if that were going to happen, just kill me now. That might be the one and only thing I would tell God to go shove it, were that asked.

I lack strength in the face of that smiling nice world I call hell.

There is only one Process I have continually shown myself to be interested in: women. Women, in my experience, being Incarnations of Process in action.

But when I will no longer be Number One for her, and when the mission dries up, where will my emotional needs be met? I wouldn't physically cheat, I didn't when I was celibate. But I definitely "emotionally" cheated on my (celibate) vows--would I do the same on my marital ones?

Sports and sex wouldn't seem to be quite cutting it. Oh and for a third S (I'm into 3s), how's about shit--what man doesn't take pride in dropping a grand deuce right out the shoot (sorry bad pun) early in the AM? Lest you think I'm all chants and devotions, I have quite the male psyche (good and not so good--for a woman's perspective that is, from my perspective its all solid gold).

Kali gives and Kali takes away. Now she loves me, now she seeks to devour, then she will abandon me (for a time, in her way). Its one thing for me to AMEN in the face of it, remain detached and unperturbed.

What is to actually enjoy the Process? What is it not to Abstract in Contractual Theologies, Rational Coherent Worldviews, and Systemic Perspectives? None of that is really processional life.

Movies help sometimes, but even those are only a half-step. I tend to favor grand visual vistas and contemplative plots (think Crouching Tiger) or the hero myth (Spiderman), the faux philosophy and social criticism of Sci-Fi Fantasy, etc.

As Jung noted, encountering the shadow is initially de-energizing. But if one captures the golden treasure guarded by the dragons of our subsconscious, there is a great boon. The shadow holds a resovoir of energy, otherwise repressed.

I don't know of anything to access those parts of myself. Nothing beyond the intellectual arid spiritual mission, being in love with being in love, or idealized fantasy--26 years and I have no clue.

Perhaps I will continue to sleepwalk through this world, never knowing. It wouldn't be the worst imaginable. Everyone has flaws, crosses they must bear, maybe this is just mine.