A summer writer’s workshop that I’ve been participating in had a session on myth and mythmaking last week. Afterwards, I went home and wrote myself a myth, which I present here in its raw, typed form (ie, forgive my spelling and editing). It turned out to be a sad myth, and I’m still deciding whether or not to change the ending. 
Those of you who know me or follow this blog will not be surprised that I am offended at the controversy over the building of a mosque in lower Manhattan. Of course, I’m not offended at the mosque, I’m offended that there’s a controversy. And the way it’s being fought, on both sides: the correct defense against the bigotry of those who object to the mosque is not to argue that the building is not at ground zero, but rather two blocks away, or that the mosque isn’t really a mosque but an “islamic cultural center.” Using these arguments grants the premise that it would be objectionable to build a center of respectful worship anywhere in America.
I think that it is the duty of all of us, as citizens of the 21st century, to find points of exchange and understanding between our own traditions and Islam. It is my understanding that this is exactly the project being pursued by the builders of this “cultural center;” to provide resources and community for Muslims in New York to feel more part of the city. This is the opposite impulse of the fundamentalists responsible for 9/11, who clearly felt alienated by America (and our actions abroad). Any attempt to create an inclusive cultural discourse is opposed to terrorism; much much more so than the bigotry of those who protest the building of mosques, which is fundamentally the same impulse as the terrorists. The problem isn’t Islam, the problem is intolerance and bigotry. Don’t let the terrorists win.
I’m busy now, but I hope to have time to go back and expand and refine this entry.
Just a follow up post to the one earlier this week on immigration in Arizona.
Although the blog below was published by Huffington Post, it was never linked to off of the main Huffinton Post Politics page. There could be any number of editorial reasons for this. One of them is that I went a bit over the HuffPo’s really quite mainstream line, though of course I stand by what I said. Another possible reason is that my post didn’t involve Kim Kardashian topless. (Now I’m being too hard on HP. Apologies.)
I mentioned in my article that illegal border crossings have fallen recently. The New Yorker, of all publications, got the statistics together to address this. Illegal border crossings have fallen because of the economy (who would come to America, of all places, to look for a job?), which is surely also the underlying reason for the recent flair-ups in nativist feelings.
I refrained from making the point that burns a hole in my mind whenever I think about immigration across Mexico’s border: all that land, including Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, is historically part of Mexico, and was stolen from Mexico during the Mexican-American war. The Mexican-American war was an unjust war. It was so unjust that our hero Henry David Thoreau protested it by getting himself arrested; the event that prompted him to pen the essay “Civil Disobedience.“ Therefore, the territory that we are working so hard to keep Mexicans out of is, by rights, their own land. White people are the ones trespassing. In this historical context, of course there’re going to be Mexicans trying to come over the border.
In America, we have an instintaneous historical memory–its as if anything that happened more than thirty years ago didn’t happen at all, and that the universe was born fully formed as it was in the 1980’s, so my point seems radical because the injustice I name happened in 1848. Of course, this is nonsense. We will pay for the injustices and oppressions we have been responsible for in the past. Let’s start a movement to give that territory back to Mexico (the Experialism of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest?). Maybe they’ll be better off.
Posted On Huffington Post Politics
TUCSON, AZ — Although Judge Susan Bolton’s ruling last week to halt the enactment of certain provisions of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s harsh new immigration law, was an important step, it does not provide resolution to the bitter controversy surrounding the law, nor does it change the atmosphere of fear and hatred that undermines the democratic process and enables legislation like this to be passed in the first place.
Arizona is not the first local government in America to attempt the policies outlined by 1070, it is merely the first state to do so. Legislation that requires police officers to check the immigration status on the basis of ‘probable cause’ was first adopted on the local level by Prince William County, Virginia in 2007 and revoked a year and a half later. The legislation in both Arizona and in Virginia was written and supported by the national group FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), which was categorized as a hate group in 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Michael M. Hethmon of FAIR proudly says, “I am the drafter of this ordinance. To the extent that there is some kind of mad scientist behind this, we’ll be happy to take credit for it,” and then proceeds to explain how the immigration issue became politically useful to local Republicans, regardless of the real impacts of immigration. “The idea that because we lack certain facts is a reason not to act is something of a self fulfilling prophecy,” he justified.
The Virginia law had disastrous effects on the local economy — effects that clearly have not been accounted for by Arizona’s lawmakers. As the law forced a significant population of legal but frightened Hispanic families out of town, the town found itself without its economic base of labor, especially in the construction industry — houses began to fall into disrepair, the houses left behind by fleeing families were left vacant. The rate of foreclosure in the county skyrocketed; it was the highest in the region during the thick of the housing crisis in 2008. The law itself proved to be inordinately expensive; taxes had to be increased to pay for police oversight and enforcement of the law, and businesses began to leave to other counties. There has been no indication that the framers of the Arizona law have gathered any evidence about the economic impact of their legislation, nor has there been a wide discussion of this impact.
The entire story of the events in Prince William County were documented by filmmakers Eric Byler and Annabel Park in their film 9500 Liberty. I had an opportunity to speak with Eric Byler in Tucson, Arizona this weekend. He emphasized the extent of the destructive rhetoric of fear and hate that undermines the democratic process and clouds the debate around this issue. This rhetoric of fear is built on economic anxiety and jingoism. The laws in both Arizona and in Virginia were passed quickly on a wave of emotion, rather than considered carefully and debated rationally.
The debate around the anti-immigration law in Virginia tore the previously peaceful town apart politically and economically. Citizens were polarized and set against each other. Civic leaders, including the highly respected police chief, were slandered and careers put on the line. In city council debates that lasted all night, anti-immigration citizens tapped into the tremendous current of fear that runs beneath this issue; 9/11 was invoked repeatedly as the reason to be suspicious of all immigrants. “Remember 9/11″ is a mantra of the anti-immigration right. But how could any of us? And when we remember, 9/11 has almost nothing to do with this issue: the terrorists were far from Latino, did not need to cross the boarder to get into this country, and had entered America as tourists, not immigrants. To invoke the pain and loss of 9/11 in this context destroys our capacity for rational debate; we must not be frightened of being cast as unpatriotic for discussing policy rather than fear.
Advocates of the anti-immigration legislation have fanned the flames of the debate by invoking images of violence perpetrated by Mexicans (specifically the drug cartels) including murders and beheadings in the desert, arguments which are empirically false but politically effective. Drug smuggling and illegal immigration are two distinct issues that effect two distinct populations.
In Virginia, the legislation was advocated by local bloggers, who claimed that Zapatista rebels were infiltrating their small town. On the comment sections of the blog, angry citizens advocated bringing guns to immigrant-rights rallies and picking some of them off. Mexican children were referred to as “parasites.”
In Arizona, the debate over SB 1070 has empowered a huge rise in hate groups and violence, like J.T. Redy, a man with neo-Nazi ties who has declared a war on the “Narco-terrorists and illegal immigrants and patrols the Arizona border armed with automatic weapons. In June, Juan Variela was shot dead in Pheonix by a neighbor after an argument over 1070.
The Pheonix New Times has documented the rising tide of hate groups hate crime in Arizona that has accompanied the passing of SB 1070. The way the political debate is framed around immigration enables this type of hate on the ground. Without bloggers, politicians, and media who regularly imply or state that Mexicans take away American jobs or are responsible for crime open the door for hate crimes against immigrants to be seen as retaliation. In Arizona, the reality is that violent crime and undocumented crossings are way down. But, as Celeste González de Bustamante, a professor of journalism at The University of Arizona, notes:
…today’s news media often posit problems such as immigration in a bipolar way, ignoring the complexity of the issue, as well as the majority of perspectives that fall between two extremes. Presenting immigration as a simple two-sided issue fuels divisiveness, contributes to hatemongering and hinders possibilities for reform.
Extreme language and directed hate are insurgency tactics calculated to destroy the democratic process and end rational debate — similar to blowing up a polling place on election day. People who believe in justice become afraid to speak.
Although the legal challenge to S.B. 1070 in Arizona looks promising now that Susan Bolton halted the enactment certain provisions of the legislation — including the police checks of immigration papers based on probable cause — the battle is far from over. Judge Bolton left a provision that would make it a crime to “harbor” or “transport” an illegal immigrant, a provision which can be mobilized to break apart mixed-status families. And the battle will continue: FAIR and its local allies across the country will continue to push through legislation like this for political gains. Immigrant families will be threatened both with deportation and with persecution from hate groups and hateful individuals.
The law itself will persecute and break apart hard working families that love America. But politics of fear that surround the law threaten to undermine the democratic process that America is built upon. We should not be afraid to challenge intolerance. We should not need to depend on the courts to overturn illegitimate laws after they are passed, we should be empowered to stop such legislation in the public sphere without fear of slander and violence. Let us not allow hate and fear to undermine our beloved democracy.
I’m on my second week of my introductory bookmaking class, and I adore it; although I’m not the most crafty of gents, I think that with practice I’ll be able to bind the books that I want to. My end goal is to be able to offer limited hand bound editions of certain books that I believe will be treasured, chiefly, Upanisads transcreated by P. Lal, as well as other worthy poetry and creative writing. I want to learn bookbinding myself because I want to do this old-school, cottage industry style, and don’t want to have to accumulate a large initial investment.
All this long-term stuff aside, I now just love the act of folding pages and gluing covers. I love my bone-folder: a piece of bone used to fold pages and make creases. My teacher told me that it needs oil, so now I carry it around as a bookmark and rub it on my neck while I’m reading. I’m like a little boy with a favorite new toy.
I admit that my interest in hand bookmaking is reactionary; the world of publishing is supposed to be obsessed with the e-book. I am excited and optimistic about e-books: I think that with some technological improvement (which I am, of course, unable to participate in), they could really bring about a renissaince in reading and writing, and, in the best case, could create a more open and participatory literary environment. The challenge is to make e-books literary, to make sure they’re edited, and to get people to pay for them.
But I wonder where my place will be as an aspiring publisher in the e-book world. I forsee a near-future where the e-book market is easy to enter; like iTunes, publishers (or just authors!) will simply submit a book to the apple bookstore, and it’ll get uploaded and subsequently downloaded. Which is good, but doesn’t constitute a real vocation.
That’s why I’m interested in raising the aesthetic and material value of paper books. In the publishing company I envision, e-books will be an available afterthought, but customers will be more excited to have access to beautiful, unique textual objects that manifest the personal values that they place on text. When I show someone a hand-bound and gold-stamped book from, say, Writers Workshop, I like to watch the way they hold them: gently, carefully, caressing the cover, or putting their hand on top of it as if it were a bible on which they were swearing an oath. Placed in such a setting, words gain more authority and beauty (assuming the content is there–that’s the important part, but a whole other game than what I’m talking about: I’m lucky to be working with breathtaking translations of ancient holy texts). These books aren’t for everyone, or almost anyone–that’s why they come in limited editions–but those who do end up posessing them will treasure them. And, anyone who wants to simply read the text can get the e-book (or, we can always consider doing a traditional mass print run if e-books fail to manifest their potential in the next few years).
I think that as a culture, we need to conciously and mindfully re-create and re-think the place of literature in our culture. It’s not as easy or as gratifying as TV or movies, but it is vital to our health and development. Part of that might be to raise the aesthetic and personal value of books. These books will help show younger generations the importance of writing, illustrate why literature ought to occupy a more sacred position in culture than TV. They can be valued as a legacy and a tradition, constantly being added to and improved upon.
Jai, Jai Saraswati!
From a friend of mine in Hyderabad, Prakash Kona
Iron Man is an arrogant, patronizing, racist prick who stands for everything that makes the United States such a crazy drunk ape of a regime. He just belongs to the long line of James Bonds and Supermans and Rambos and other dickheads who are out there to save white Americans and their families from the wretched others. There’s a point Baldwin makes over and again: what is missing or rather repressed in white American consciousness is blackness. This blackness takes myriad forms from the “blacks” themselves to communists, Arabs and gays. The stupidest American movie gives you an idea of what this hidden face of blackness is all about.
I have to agree.
In looking for my keys (aargh, where are my keys?) I pulled out my small pile of scraps and fragments that my typewriter has generated over the last few weeks. This blog was originally conceived as a public notebook, and this post is in line with that: these fragments are totally raw, unedited, personal; they are a blend of fiction and reality; sometimes I was writing the emotional state of a fictional character in my mind, and yet I cannot hide the truth that I have been focused on vocational anxiety, and what little writing I’ve managed to eeke out of that unproductive emotion can only wallow in it pitifully.
–
THE PLATFORM OF THE SATISFACTIONIST PARTY INTERNATIONAL (DRAFT)
What is is all that is, and so it must satiate.
Since what is is all that is, any economy predicated on growth and dependent upon expansion for its health is inherently a lie.
We have been lied to by expansionist policy: humans are enveloped in finity. We cannot escape our own skin. And yet, we must eat.
The past has put too much energy and investment into expansion: we will turn the movement inwards, to provide sustenance for our own bellies first.
Therefore, all capital relegated into abstraction by history must be liquefied into usable material. What is, must be made available to consumption; what was always only hypothetical must be rendered as a lie.
i e, all capital must be liquedated.
Capital that exists as human potential must be either liberated or more fully utilized. Labor is not the only human potential.
All assets owend by previously incorporated national entities must be liquefied and fed back to the bodies politic, including all back stores of grain, inks, papers, oils, and other commodities.
In the case that assets owned by a particular national entity are human in nature, i e of an emotional or creative value, or expressed in terms of potential instilled by a process of over- and elite- education, these assets must be brought under liquified scientific scruitiny and re-administered to the intellecutal elite who will re-create value to be fed back to the Taxpayer in aspirational morale.
And so on, ad nauseum.
–
The mind has become obscured. It can no longer differentiate passion from desire, dharma from vocation. I am controlled, manhandled by the anxieties of desire. I am not my situation: my days run through me as a river in the desert; I waste myself unwisely, expend myself in diversions, offer myself to those who are unworthy. I spend energy trying to ignore myself. I cannot sustain creation and balance. I ebb and flow rapidly, I find myself unpredictable and unreliable; I surrender myself to myself; I bow before the ferment; I am too ready to accept faliure as fate.
Again I will try; today again I will remake myself. I will become…
–
What truths can economies manufacture?
What productivity does anxiety wreck?
Why am I so determined to obey? Why do I so virulently seek my own powerlessness? What am I doing to my lungs, my body, my voice? Oh, great risi, advise me, I know not my dharma. AM I to function, to languish, or to revolt? I am comfortable with any of these, my path is not yet formed. I get no directions from community or environs. Individualism has taken me too far off any recognizable road. I have something to offer any who is not myself, but I do not know who or what. Like a child lost in a forest, I watch capitalism but cannot participate; like a child in a forest, I can walk through streets lined with mighty buildings and cannot enter any; what I call my home is a temporary shelter, a camp. Will I reach home in this life? Is this my desire? Is desire what ought to guide me? I am mighty. This, I have never doubted. But the nature of my expression, the manifestation of inner power in the form of a life’s work, I do not know. I have long believed that when I am old, it will become clear what my life’s work has been. I have never thought that I would know beforehand. I thought perhaps that it would only be a soft touch that was required from myself to enter the chute of karmic works, to begin to truly create, to feel desiring products to spin daily out from my fingertips. Effort is worthwhile, and yet I am lazy: I have been lazy; I must soon reposition myself, delve into some rich atmosphere of intention, intention that most valuable of treasures, which brings significance to every action.
–
drive, drive that beast along. That unyielding desire, drive it to wealth justified by art that does not lie; the forum that is a lie. White space is expensive in this land, white walls do not come easy. Through riches and on to death. Through fame and on to failure. Through love and on to war, we drive, holding drinks and passing out printed cards, we try to thrive through mimosas and martinis, barely balancing on the edge of sobriety, we drive, through convention centers of hungry eyes, through failure we drive.
Jai Jai Navia
Zed
P. Lal and his translation of The Mandukya Upanisad teaches us that there are four components to the symbol Aum (seen above). To write Aum requires three separate strokes of the pen, each of which corresponds to one of the three sounds in the sacred vowel (A-O-M)
The first is the A symbol and sound, written like the number 3. This is the waking state, the reality we all share with each other. The enunciator opens his or her mouth wide to engage external reality; our external gates and senses are open. From P Lal’s translation:
Sloka 3
The first is the waking state.
It has seven limbs and nineteen mouths.
It knows the external objects, it enjoys external objects.
This is common to all persons.
Sloka 9
The waking state is A
Its root is ap, to obtain
Or adi, first.
Who knows this is first.
Who knows this obtains all desires.
As a Buddhist will tell you, the waking state is full of strife and suffering. We are vulnerable, attached to our bodies and our desires, doomed either to faliure or success. Realizing this, the enunciator closes his or her mouth a bit, rounds it into the O shape to make the U sound, which corresponds to the tail of the written Aum:
4
The second is the dreaming state.
It has seven limbs and nineteen mouths.
It looks inward.
It enjoys the subtle and the brilliant.
10
The dreaming state is U
It is the second.
It shines.
It exalts.
It is mid-way.
Who knows this transmits knowledge.
Who knows this is stable.
None is born in that person’s family without knowledge of Brahman.
The third is the dot above the sign, the anusvara or the bindu (yes, like the bindi that women wear). The enunciator closes his or her mouth and hums, making the M sound. The mouth closed, the enunciator has pulled into him or herself and into the highest state, the state of dreamless sleeping. This is the highest state a yogi can attain:
5
The third is the dreamless-sleeping state.
It does not desire anything.
It is deep sleep.
Its face is meditation.
It is pure knowledge.
It is one.
It is a mass of knowledge.
It enjoys bliss.
It is bliss.
11
The dreamless-sleeping state is M.
It is third.
Its root is mi, to measure,
It absorbs.
Who knows this, is absorbed.
But wait! We have exhausted our symbol! What fourth state could there be, what have we forgotten? The most important one of all, the whole point of all this: the page on which Aum is written, the silence in which it is spoken. Nothing can be without being opposed; if Aum is everything, it is opposed by nothingness. The enunciator falls silent, and it is in this pause before his or her next in-breath that the reward of peace can find a foothold.
7
The fourth is the atman.
The fourth is what should be known.
It does not look inward.
It does not look outward.
It is not a mass of knowledge.
It is not knowledge.
It is neither knowing nor not-knowing.
It cannot be seen.
It cannot be possessed.
It cannot be dealt with.
It is the essence of being one.
It is serene.
It is auspicious.
It has no second.
12
The forth is silence.
It does not grow.
It cannot be dealt with.
It is without a second.
It is auspicious.
The syllable Aum is the atman.
Who knows this knows what there is to know.
Who knows this enters the Atman with atman.
There are about 10 people a day who read this blog, so I feel comfortable sharing this knowledge; such truths should not be shared lightly, but they should not be withheld from those who seek them.
Anyone want to sign up to comment/submit writing in this space? email me.
*That is Fullness*
*This is Fullness*
*From Fullness comes Fullness*
*Take Fullness from Fullness*
*What remains is Fullness*
*[Aum] Santih santih santih***
I’ve been returning to my study of P. Lal’s translations of the Upanisads recently, especially the Mundukya, Svetasvarana, and Isa Upanisads, for now. More on those later. I recently shared the Svetasvarana with a friend of mine who is Christian, advising her to simply be willing to substitute her own names for what she understands as her higher power in place of the names the text provided. She did a good job of highlighting the inner monism of a lot of Hinduism: the belief in one unnameable, all-pervasive, unknowable Power, which then gets attached to a lot of different names.
I’m working on a project that will print and bind texts like this on an extremely small and cottage-industry level and sort of make it available to whoever might be able to find them. It’s still in the preliminary stages yet, but I have bookshelves full of these books which are unavailable anywhere in the West and barely available in India, but I find that their power is too immense for me to bear alone.
A word on the political moment of the upanisads:
The Upanisads are sort of a second-or-third generation set of Hindu texts–the first being the Vedas, then the Puranas/Brahaminical text. So that places these texts in the same generation or moment of the Buddha. It was a time of reformation. The Brahmins had made Hinduism too political and institutionalized, and the religion was beginning to fragment into sects that reformed the ideas of Hinduism, like Jains and Buddhists. In order to maintain legitimacy and a following, thinkers within Hinduism found themselves opening up to a more personal, spiritualist set of ideas; if they didn’t, all their followers who were looking for that content would have become Buddhists. In a way, the moment of the Upanisads is kind of similar to the moment of the protestant reformation–which is why all the questioning of authority and god, and all the affirmation of personal devotion and theology. In the end, Hinduism is a monist religion; they believe in one unknowable and incomprehensible force that runs through everything, that can be named whatever we want it to name. Rudra is an early name of the god Shiva, who can be seen as the god of entropy; he’s something of an outsider among the gods, as well; he’s known to shirk his duties of receiving sacrifice and spend his time alone meditating. At the moment of the Upanisads, gods like Rudra/Siva were supplanting the old of gods like Indra, who is more akin to Zeus than anything recognizable to modern religion; Indra was the king of the gods, but was also petty and very political, so calling Rudra the god of the gods might have been an effort to undermine that old-guard system.
The text relies on the power of poetry and aesthetics, rather than dogma and description, to convey the power at issue:
Since Rudra is one
there is no second.
Those who know this
do not even imagine a second.
He rules the worlds
with divine power.
He projects the worlds
He protects the worlds
He withdraws the worlds
at the time of dissolution.
3
His eyes are everywhere
Everywhere his face
his arms
his feet
He is the One Divinity
who created
heaven and earth
He is the One
who gave hands to humans
and wings to birds.
6
O Girisanta
O Mountain-Dweller
O Thunderbolt-Wielder
O Giritra
O Mountain-Protector
make your thunderbolt auspicious— the nectar of non-death
9
Nothing better than him
nothing worse
Nothing greater than him
nothing smaller
He dazzles
by his own dazzle
Firm as a tree
he straddles the universe.
11
All faces
All heads
All necks
Such is he
He lives
In the hearts of all
Bhagavan
is everywhere
Bhagavan Siva
is omnipresent
12
The Great Lord
The Great Purusa
He inspires
the mind
to the perfect and pure
He is the Ruler
the Undecaying Radiance
15
The Purusa is
that which is past
that which is future
that which is present
The Purusa
grants *amrita*
the nectar of non-death.
2
You are That!
That is fire
That is the sun
That is the moon
That is the constellations
That is Brahman
That is water
That is Prajapati
Lord of all life!
3
You are woman
You are man
You are boy
You are girl
You are old man
tottering with a stick
You are the one born
with faces everywhere!
4
You are
the blue butterfly
the green parrot with red eyes
You bear
the lightning in your womb
You are
the seasons
the seas
You are
without beginning
You always are
From you
emerge all worlds
5
A he-goat
pleasurably
sleeps with a she-goat
The she-goat
is red
and white and black
Red for fire
white for water
black for earth
The she-goat
gives birth
to countless offspring
One other
leaves her
after enjoying her.
6
Two lovely birds
two close friends
perch on the bough
of a *pippala* tree
One eats
the ripe
and delicious
*pippala* fruit
The other watches.
Which one is happier?
To me, the fundamental line is, “You are that!” What is being described is nothing beyond your own self, reader! This is how I mantain a spiritual athiesm that my Christian friend couldn’t understand: what is being described is only what is known and understood; it does not hover above reality, it is reality. The only step–and it is not a step of faith, only a step of humility–is to understand that in a human form, one can never have access to a fraction of existence–but it exists, and we can content ourselves with our unknowing, our inability to know. Nonetheless, there it is, in your body, ten fingers above your navel.
Expect more along this line on this blog…if I am to write every day, I may have to rely on such abstractions…
First of all, a blog-related announcement:
I’m newly resolved to use this blog as a venue for writing in a more bloggy style than I have been. Up until now, I’ve seen this space as a sort of public notebook. Now, I want it to be more of a catalyst for self expression and analysis. the stuff on it will remain unedited and unconsidered. I’m hoping that if I keep up with it more, I’ll end up writing more and more regularly, and will open up new avenues for consideration and exploration.
Like this:
This morning I was struck by this article in the Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27Paglia.html?src=me&ref=general
Despite the obnoxious headline, I thought that the article was incredibly well written and well argued.
The article gently hinted at a vaguely class-based or even Marxist reading of sexuality: the problem that she names lies within the current bourgeois regime, and can be seen in opposition to “Latino and African-American taste, which runs toward the healthy silhouette of the bootylicious Beyoncé,” or even “Country music, with its history in the rural South and Southwest, is still filled with blazingly raunchy scenarios, where the sexes remain dynamically polarized in the old-fashioned way.”
(it is worth noting that her perspective is clearly limited to the Western hemisphere: what are we to make of the more rigorous and codified repressions of the Islamic or Hindu worlds, where the bourgeoisie is inarguably more sexually liberated than the controlled classes? Is this a contrast worth drawing, or does it just reinforce the us/them mentality? )
Although I agree with her about the situation in the culture that I inhabit (young white middle class), I am a bit wary of her attitude toward the contrasting situations; I think that she may be echoing some of the modernist ideas of primitivism; that ‘those people’ (non-middle-class-repressed-whites) are closer to nature or something along those lines. In America, despite the numbers Blacks and Latinos live within an economic and social system dominated by the white middle class; if they want to improve their socioeconomic status, they must be more rigorous about controlling their sexuality even than the white middle class that Pagalia discusses here. Perhaps the popularity of the “healthy silhouette of the bootylicious Beyonce” should be seen as a subversive signifier, the impulse of oppressed masses to resist the dominant sexual paradigm, rather than a pure, natural lack of repression?
Moreover, while I’m critiquing an article that I loved and found myself agreeing with, we have to be careful about nostalgia. It is a good thing that women have more prominence in the white collar economy; it’s just a new thing that needs to be understood. I’d rather live in a world where women can climb the ranks of power than a world where they are confined to the libidinal and domestic realms.
But, much more importantly, I personally appreciated Pagalia’s article. As a resident of the white-middle-class that Pagalia writes about, I agree with her. The article spoke to me loudly as a current resident of Brooklyn, where all physicality seems relegated to studio spaces where we practice yoga or capoeira or pilates. These practices are very nice–I think I’m about to go to a new yoga studio myself in an hour or two–but what of bump and grind lasciviousness? More personally, how have we (I) become resigned to long periods of celibacy in an urban space teeming with youth and humanity? Of course there are personality issues involved in that, but I’m becoming more and more aware of the cultural limitations on libidinal expression in the youth culture of the city. In my opinion, these limitations and repressions undo a lot of the progress that was made by first and second wave feminism and the sexual revolution.
To me, it feels that dating culture is too oriented toward lifelong partnerships, which makes the whole thing feel disturbingly vocational, where sexual choices are made based on notions of cultural and social status. To make sexual choices based on social and vocational compatibility only makes sense when everyone is solely focused on finding a long-term partner. I think that humans who are so vocationally driven (which is why we are living in New York, after all), can’t make the switch to libidinal desire in their private time; the striving and struggle of the workplace is carried into the bars and parties. Bodies themselves are not really the objects of desire, not valued as beautiful, not really lusted after. All of which works against me on the scene, because I have yet to find my vocational place in this city (beyond my MFA program). This vocational system, as this NYtimes points out, no longer makes a gender differentiation, which is good, politically, but boring, libidinally.
This makes me insecure, to be frank and honest. I value my body regardless of what mess I get myself into vocationally. I like to use it to dance and bike and lift things. I am happy with and proud of my limited masculinity, but I feel that my masculinity has almost no role to play in my life, more so because of my slight build and small stature. I feel emasculated. This feels so good to say that it might be important.
(This is why it’s good to write bloggingly; I’ve reached a truth that might be useful to myself: perhaps I can find ways to reaffirm the value of my physical and masculine forms as I move forward: check back)
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