Channeling other voices

[randy_byers]

Has my writing here become less personal? Probably the most interesting personal story I have to tell of late is something I'd have to Friends-lock and perhaps even filter, and I just don't want to get that complicated. Instead I wrote it in an e-mail letter to Sharee, who is locked and filtered by the sea. Meanwhile, feelings about the election have already gotten even more complicated, and that's as it should be. There is no easy way to resolve the paradoxes. I've said pretty much all I have to say (which wasn't much) in other forums, so for now I'll just point to another poetry discussion over at Ta-Nehisi Coates' place. The poem is "Victims of the Latest Dance Craze" by Cornelius Eady. Here's a snippet that could be about the election:

And in a factory,
A janitor asks his broom
For a waltz,
And he grasps it like a woman
He'd have to live another
Life to meet,
And he spins around the dust bin
And machines and thinks:
Is everybody happy?

But then there's the comments section, and this meditation by someone who signs himself (assuming it's a he) zackboston:

I was first generation college and like many came out of a home filled with wretching and multiple forms of pain tied to what my family experienced as immigrants and their helplessness turned to rage in the face of that. I took solace in mathematics because unlike my life, in mathematics you could describe a problem and actually solve the problem and there was a right answer and a wrong answer.

That was a comfort to me until I faced a course in complex variables where you worked in a space that involved numbers that were the square root of -1 --- some people call it "imaginary numbers." In this space, there were no lines, only circles. I always experienced math on an emotional and spiritual level. So this was a crisis of the spirit for me. What happens when the poles disappear --- when there is no right and no wrong for instance? I took that class three times and got the highest grade in the class until we came to that proof and then I abruptly dropped out. It looked like I would never graduate with my engineering degree becasue of this class.

And in one of those interventions that change your life, someone explained to me about reconciling paradoxes and got me to work with that in my life. To strive to imagine how the pain of my life could be unspeakable but also be the greatest gift and source of joy in my life. I used to have a spoken word poem on my wall over my desk that had this tremendous image of a broken woman who is faced with a broken high voltage wire and she takes one end in each hand and becomes the conduit of power. That's how the work of reconciling opposites felt to me, but it also healed me enough to function in this world.

Comments

[maryread.livejournal.com]

thanks for that.

i have come up against that reconciling paradoxes thing right prompt, while writing on my Content Thing again. i've pushed at it until i stopped, some kinda roadblock, immobility, and noticed it's not enough fun, and there has got to be some fun, otherwise no point in going there. i'll be looking for at least the absurdity amongst the bleakness, and trying to think of other people who might be on the same page with me.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, I was just out raking leaves and planting irises. That's another thing where you can define the problem and solve it pretty easily. Felt good!

And I'm a big believer in the healing power of absurdity. Sometimes I think absurdity is just the funny side of paradox.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

That's beautiful, the poem and the comment you quoted both.

If you ever publish a book of essays, you should call it Mathematics, Paradoxes, Poetry. Even (perhaps especially) if there's nothing of mathematics, paradoxes, or poetry in it. It's just three words that are unexpected yet beautiful together.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd have to write some essays before I could publish a book of them, but yeah, I liked the combination of those words too.

[alces2.livejournal.com]

Excuse me, just a second, just have to scream to the side here. No problem. I must say that I get really, really frustrated when someone says, oh I have something really huge that happened but I'm not going to tell you. I think my preference would be to not even hear mention of said event since my curiosity is a horrible giant monster and it will be banging at the bars of the cage for hours, wondering, wondering, wondering. Even if it has absolutely nothing to do with me. Never mind.

Feeling about the election have become even more complicated? All said in forums where I don't exist. Bang goes the bars, bang again.

The only thing I have anything at length to talk about for the whole thing is about math and I'll wander off where I shouldn't. I was first generation college. However I studied i (square root of -1) in, hm, either high school or maybe junior high. I was in advanced math classes in junior high and high school, My various college entrance exams provided me with credits for a number of semesters of math. Even then I took many semesters of math for electrical engineering. Math, imaginary or otherwise, was never a problem. Don't know why I never had a problem with i. Admittedly I haven't had much of a problem with me either except for the silly part about having no particular drive to get beyond a certain point. Basically I'm a slacker with high math and science skills and I even know how to pronounce nuclear, that is to say my ability in English is also not particularly atrocious. See, I told you I shouldn't have gone here.

And if we delve into opposites there is a thing called shadow work in an extracurricular area in which I am involved and I do have a hard time there for I feel no shadows inside me. Oh, I suppose I have some opposites but they don't pull me apart. They don't even bother me very much. What I am I am. What exists within me and in the world is. I function in the world and I don't feel too much angst about the whole thing. Or do I? I don't feel the need to talk to people much but once in a great a while I'll put down a long string of stupid, strung-together meaningless blather. However, as noted, I usually keep it well-tethered, whereas most do not. At times, my loss, I suppose. Again, I don't worry about it too much for any great length of time.

Unfortunately that stupid curiosity monster is still banging against the bars.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Sorry, G., I see that I was being more than a bit of a tease there. The personal story is about a woman I longed after for a decade, pretty much all of the '90s. Saw her again recently and no longer felt anything. This left me feeling confused about that past decade in my life and all kinds of related things, including my sexuality, the absence of any kind of long term relationship to speak of.

But I think the real point of bringing it up in passing is that I'm feeling conflicted about writing about personal stuff here. It hits me more and more that I shouldn't write about anything in my LiveJournal that I wouldn't want the subject of my writing to read. I'm wrestling with that, meanwhile feeling that all I'm writing about now are politics, film, and science fiction.

I studied imaginary numbers at some point in high school. I made it as far as trigonometry and what was called elementary functions before I crapped out, but I never felt comfortable with mathematics, felt humiliated that I wasn't as smart in it as some of my close friends. (We called them the Math Jocks, and they won a state math championship our junior year.) Fascinating to hear that you you feel no shadows within yourself. I feel fewer than I once did, and mine were more the result of sins of omission than sins of commission. Or maybe simply the result of living for a while at a very young age in a culture where I was the odd man out. Is that why my sense of sexual agency never developed? Would it have been different if I had studied calculus? There is no easy way to resolve these paradoxes.

Thanks for expressing your frustration, by the way.

[alces2.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the explanation. I'm in a long term relationship but I'm sure there are benefits to not being one. I have come to the conclusion that questioning the past doesn't change the present, other than adding in a bit of anguish. Now admittedly maybe something can be learned by reviewing the past but getting depressed over it has no benefits, as far as I can tell. I haven't really questioned my sexuality so I can offer no opinion in that area. Okay, maybe once in a while I will say to myself, "Self, do you question your sexuality?" and so far I have replied, "Um, nope." I am obviously missing all these quests for the self. So many say that the quest is the thing. See how much I've lost by just jumping to the end so quickly? All those great articles riddled with angst that I could have written? Darn.

I must admit that I don't write about most of the emotions that cross my mind. I actually don't talk much about them either. For the most part I try to not dwell on them and simply let them go. Should some event appear, some door open in front of me, that some of those silly emotions seem to indicate would be enjoyable and not lead to unpleasantness or maybe not too much unpleasantness, I'll certainly think about passing through that door, and not at great length, more often than not.

Politics, film and science fiction. What about music?

I don't think you should feel humiliated about not doing well in math. I see no clear advantage to being upset about being who you are. Oh, I know some will say that it is quite marvelous to work hard on those things you don't know and to be able to overcome the obstacles and advance forward through adversity. Well, that's who they are but not really who I am.

Hm, now I'm curious why you consider living as the odd man out caused a sense of sexual agency to never develop. Um, what is a sense of sexual agency? Agency, "The ability to control resources and make decisions". Googling it turns up lots of articles about women's sexual agency and the development of sexual agency in females. Ah, there are some articles about men and sexual agency but seemingly not as many. Hm, there's an article at Scribd. The article indicates it is "not merely ... the capacity to choose, engage in, or refuse sex acts" bt also ".... the sense of oneself as a sexual being". Maybe I should read the whole article.

My frustration is certainly not much to get upset about, not much to worry about. Some time it breaks out though. I feel obliged to apologize for its wanton excessiveness or should that be wanton outbursts, or maybe not.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that sexual agency is mojo, but it appears that a mojo is a magic charm and that I misunderstood what Muddy Waters meant by "I got my mojo working." The notes at Wikipedia claim, "The bag or purse-like mojo symbolizes female genitalia, and in this very sexualized sense, mojos are more often associated with women than with men." No wonder I'm confused! But perhaps this simply confirms what you found via Google.