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

[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.