Spectacle(s)

It seems odd to find spectacles in a graveyard. After all, what is it that the dead really can see? Or, as importantly, what would they want to see now that they are dead? Alas, nothing. But this all is part of the spectacle of body preservation. To embalm, bury and even entomb there are specific procedures, money, and a great deal of time required. There is, perhaps, no greater example of the spectacle than Lafayette Cemetery in New Orleans where this photograph was taken. Here opulence is not hidden. Featuring above-ground monuments and mausoleums (in the style of Parisian cemeteries), some are indeed simple, but by and large you are in awe at towering stone structures and tombs that make you want to uncover the mysterious lives the enshrined once lived. While all of the spectacle seems useless coming from someone who does not believe in an afterlife, who sees death not as an ascent but instead a decomposition, it is nonetheless beautiful in part because it seems so futile. While I may see no spiritual value in the cemetery, rays of sunshine in the late afternoon dance over the stones and cast shadows I have never imagined before. The beauty lies in this absurdity.

As I pass by the spectacles on my way out, I know that they have no purpose, but it is precisely because they will sit there waiting, until taken or disrupted by weather, that they are illuminating. They are not for the dead. The dead cannot see any longer; their eyes have decomposed. They are but skeletons now, frames of their former glories and shortcomings. Instead, this human possession is there for the living, spectacles to preserve the spectacle of faith, reminding me of the lengths to which families go to provide a comfortable eternal life.

Sitting By My Willow: An Exploration

I woke up this morning and didn’t think to myself ‘who am I?’ I woke up this morning and knew exactly who I was, what I was going to do, and what it meant to be me. I gazed half-mindedly into the mirror and didn’t gasp and think some stranger was staring back at me. Thinking about it now, I realize that if I didn’t know who I was, I would be lost in blustery wind— blown about without any sense of purpose, without any path, less traveled or not. ‘I am myself’ is such a strong statement, meaningful and uplifting all the same. But if I don’t know how to explain I am myself, can I really say I know who I am?

The first thing that I know is a part of me is my flesh, a byproduct of the X and the withered Y chromosomes. Together they are my genetic material, the sort of thing that makes me (at least) physically who I am. I look into the mirror and see those fire-and-ice blue eyes staring back at me, dirty blond hair sitting at the top of my head, my fair complexion dotted with some mild acne. But it isn’t just the fact that I recognize these features that is significant. I can recognize features on other people rather easily and it doesn’t bring me any closer to understanding who I am. They are not me; I am a separate physical being, at least as far I know. (Experimental physics anyone?)

It is the fact I have learned about science and genetics that I am able to apply those concepts to my own appearance, and am able to truly differentiate and say that I am myself. With my knowledge of genetics, I know it is virtually impossible to be physically identical to another person. I know looking into a mirror that the exact combination of color in and pattern in my eyes are not exactly the same. My unique pattern of fingerprint loops and arches and other traits belong to me and me alone. But (and there always seems to be an extra condition) that just can’t be the only reason I know I am myself because my physical appearance is only “skin-deep”. What about my brain, my mind, my past? What does that have to do with anything?

A great deal, I would say. At first, I’m quick to say that all of my experiences have shaped me in some way, but I realize that everyone has experiences everyday. After all, we are sensory-dependent creatures living in a world with too much sensory data to process at once. Thus I think it is necessary to look at specific experiences, their connections to one another, and ultimately the picture or image they seem to paint of my self. These experiences (and specifically the details of how they occur) are what set me apart from others and make me understand and comprehend just who I am.

Memories, I realize, are the very things that define my existence. They are my past— innumerable lockets tucked in my mind, just waiting to be drawn up. I lean against the willow, stare out on the reflective water, and I remember (without hesitation) my second birthday party. I was a precocious young child, awash with hot August sun, my light blonde hair shimmering in 1991. Denim overalls. A 1990s-style can of Pepsi clutched in my hands. A mischievous smile owning up to my precocity and limitless curiosity. It’s all vivid, fresh, and engaging, providing a sense of something that happened to me when I was a toddler.

I am tossed back into reality. But the water ebbs in the gentle breeze as my memories quickly pull me back a year to December 24th, 2005. It was Christmas Eve and I was just gotten out of a festive celebration at my great aunt’s house in Racine, Wisconsin. There had been satiating food and desserts, and a wonderful, warm feeling that just materializes with the holiday season. A good amount of snow had fallen while we had been inside, so the ground and the roads were slick and, consequently, rather dangerous.

I remember the car ride home pretty clearly as we were slipping and sliding all over the place on frequently traveled roads. But I also remember the trip because it was filled with tumult. I know I was arguing throughout the course of the ride with my mother. Exactly what I was arguing about, I can’t say I know for certain, but I think the fact that I don’t know what it was demonstrates that it isn’t very important. It might have been post-holiday blues, the “wild” nature of the ride, or a seemingly infinite number of other things. Whatever the tension was, it permeated the air and spilled out onto the snowy driveway as we pulled up to my house.

As soon as I got home, I went up to my room and sat on the edge of my bed. I felt like an actor standing in the middle of the stage, six different colors of lights shining down, unable to remember my lines, making me feel confused and lost, swallowed up by my emotions and everything else I was feeling. The truth is I knew exactly why I had been getting into a number of arguments with my mother in the past few months; it wasn’t anything new or unusual. I had just come out as gay to friends beginning in October, but I had grudgingly held off from telling my mother for a number of reasons, mainly uncertainty of her reaction, the implications of my telling her, and a whole host of other emotions, even though I had a good idea she would be accepting and just fine with it.

A little bit later, as I felt my internal monologue brooding inside of me on the edge of my bed, she knocked on my door and asked to come in. I huffed out an okay, and she sat next to me on the edge of my bed, she had a look of concern on her face. I think I had an idea of what was coming. At once, she asked a loaded question that struck me squarely in the heart. “Is there something you need to tell me?” I sat quietly for a moment, in utter silence, and I looked at her for a moment. At that point, I felt the tears pooling in my eyes (though I still can’t explain why), and at once it all came out. Fast, a mess of words packed with emotion: “I’m gay.” Tears ran down her face, and we hugged in a tight embrace that didn’t seem to end for a long time. At that moment I knew she already had known, that there wasn’t anything wrong with being gay, and that she too felt relieved that I had mustered the courage to say those two words. And that was the end of my Christmas Eve.

The waves momentarily pound against the rocks and I am ushered back into reality. It’s this willow tree where I always go to gather up my thoughts and store them right in front of me. I sit quietly for a moment and realize something. Wait……I know something seems odd. I pause again, examining my memory, and spotting six bold words: though I still can’t explain why. At once, they’re jarring. I don’t want to hear them and they can’t be so. They can’t be something I said because I KNOW who I am and I know my emotions, how else would I able recollect with such detail the events of more than a year ago? Pausing again, I sigh and realize my conundrum. If I argue before that my memories and experiences, my second birthday and coming out (in particular), are what set me apart from others and create my sense of self, doesn’t it seem paradoxical not to know a part of a memory, especially at such an emotionally taxing moment?

It’s an interesting question but one that it certainly not the easiest to answer. If I answer that part of knowing myself is knowing what I am not, I don’t offer any proof. Certainly I can say I don’t know all of my emotions and can’t possibly ever understand them all because of the simple fact my brain has so many other things to process. You’d accept that notion unless you were in some ‘I spite science’ mood. But I don’t think I could give up on the underlying unknown meaning behind the tears. For me, I’d view it as a resignation, shying away from challenging my thought process. I am determined to understand it more.

First, I look at the tears as being situational, that is to say occurring in a specific moment based on a continuation of events beginning some hours before. The moment that my memory begins, I am able to start understanding and carefully analyzing exactly not just what is happening but what it, this situation, is trying to say about me. The first “real” moment of the memory— the period where things become clear— is the slipping and sliding on the frequently traveled roads. This act, written without much of my own conscious awareness, symbolizes the nature of the argument on the road, leading for the ride to be unexpected, and thus slippery, in an emotional sense.

It progresses on to the edge of my bed, where I profess feelings of emotional confusion and loss, suggesting the fact that I had so many other emotions to deal with already, I simply wasn’t able to deal with or comprehend all of them. But even this motion of confusion is interjected by what I see as truth, my saying that I really had been getting into my arguments because of coming out and hiding it from her. So was I really lost in my emotional realm or just creating at the time my own false sense of confusion? I think that at that time I created that false sense as a means of avoidance, a means to avoid the pronouncement of “I am gay.” I guess for me, taking a moment to think back, these arguments served as a neurotic defense mechanism to project my intense feelings of uncertainty with the possibility of abandonment into a form of an emotional anger release. Did it work? Clearly not, as anxiety only sprouted new leaves that were given an opportunity to mature longer each time.

This defense mechanism of projection in the car ultimately set me up for the pronouncement of gayness with my mother. Sitting on the bed, my mom came in, as I huffed out an okay (i.e. very grudgingly). She found a spot on the edge of the bed. She had a look of concern on her face so I had an idea of what was coming. She asked the loaded question and I sat silently for a moment, looked at her, and then cried. Just examining this for a moment, a number of questions arise. If I saw the look of concern in her eyes and knew what was going to be said why would I wait to cry until after she asked her loaded question? Why did I wait to cry until I was silent and looking at her? Wouldn’t it have made more sense just to start crying when she asked the question? Are emotions even rational? It’s a barrage of questions all at once, I realize, but they are absolutely necessary to understanding just how the tears came be. They are absolutely necessary to dispel the earlier question of a paradox being presented.

For the first question, a simple answer can be found. It is entirely possible that while I expected what was going to happen (natural intuition, perhaps). I wasn’t braced for the fallout of her actually asking a question and digging me into sharing such a big portion of who was. If this is the case, the idea of ‘knowing what to expect’ can merely be described in terms of knowing that I would have to come out but not being fully aware of specific details of the event— just how it was going to be expressed by my mother. Taking that notion into effect, I am able discount the idea that my tears weren’t actually based on coming out (something I have held pretty closely since that time) because I would have known I was going to come out and would have cried the moment my mother knocked on my door.

The answer to the second question, as to why I would have waited to cry until I was silent and looking at her, offers a plausible solution to why the tears themselves fell. It is possible that I waited to cry until I was silent and looking at her because I had time to process the look of concern on her face. In spending that time to process the look on her face and connecting it to my own preexisting feelings, I was able to realize that my actions of avoidance and confrontation against my mother caused negative impacts on her own physical and psychological well-being. She became increasingly concerned about me as we went through these spats and felt it necessary to confront me. It suggests the notion of me feeling sorry that my own selfish desire to remain (packaged) in the heterosexual realm of being directly hurt her. Thus, the tears served as a response of regret to my actions since October in remaining in the closet, fearful and uncertain just of what her reaction would be.

This idea certainly seems plausible, but is it what is considered truth? I mean exactly what truth is or how it is defined today is difficult to grasp. So I can’t say it is the truth— one hundred percent certain— just as much as I can’t say that all of the details in this memory are accurate (based on recent research by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus ). However, something about this idea seems…no, is…visceral. It seems that way because of the nature of my feelings, of my emotions, and my personality complex. I have always been an emotionally virulent individual and, consequently, I respond strongly in most every emotional situation, particularly those involving my family. Thus, in this conception of myself, I would expect to respond rather emotively as I did. There isn’t any conscious control I have over (and had) over my tears.

Certainly I have control of my emotions but when it comes to feeling hurt, guilt, or regretful, I am relatively unable to hide the tears. As a child, when I used to scrape my knees or get a jammed finger playing basketball, I just wasn’t macho. I didn’t believe in that ideal of masculinity worshiped on roads, skyscrapers and football fields everywhere. Certainly that made me unique, different, queer or whatever other words exist, but that didn’t matter. Well, I mean it has influenced my friendships with other guys for nearly my entire life, but it also fit with my greater intellectual ability and maturity. Effectively, it was a part of who I was. But how can I quantify my emotions in looking at my mom as hurt, guilt, or regret?

I can quantify my emotion at that time as such by looking at patterns of my own behavior. For much of my recent life, there has been a guilt or regret complex that has taken hold in becoming increasingly self-aware. Through this process of self-awareness, I have concurrently developed a stronger emotional empathy and understanding for the needs of other individuals. In developing this empathy, I began to get more involved in the community and expose myself to more facets of culture and society (displays of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, poverty, punitive justice, etc.) that absolutely horrified me and caused me to reevaluate my position in society. Particularly, I think that I became more self-aware of the influence of my actions on other individuals such that I would feel a strong sense of guilt when I did something that wrongly and negatively influenced another person. This pattern seems to support the notion that my selfishness avoidance and hiding of my sexuality— and the fact that it caused negative effects for my mother— would contribute to feelings of regret in not going out sooner because of the guilt in hurting her.

With a stronger sense of why my tears fell in that moment, I wonder what the hell that has to do with who I am. I pause again. Waves splash and a gull swoops down, coasting across the surface of the water, searching for a hint of a late afternoon meal. The reasons why this is important become clear:

1) In rehashing and dissecting the memory, I arrived at a (new) point of understanding about myself.

2) In this point of understanding about myself, I developed an explanation for a previous unexplainable concept or idea in such a crucial point in my life.

3) Through the analysis of a moment I didn’t understand, I used preexisting fabrics of myself to fit my behavior into a larger pattern or personality complex, thereby strengthening and supporting this personality complex.

4) It devalues the idea of the “knowing is part of knowing what I don’t know” because it demonstrates, in this instance, not knowing something about yourself is really just an expression of not putting forth enough effort to understand what you don’t know. It can also be an expression of the need for a reevaluation of the methods you have previously used to try and understand something.

5) Finally, the process which you use to arrive at understanding something unknown relies blatantly on past memories, present feelings, and conceptions of the world— all what I describe as important aspects of self.

Ultimately, who I am is part physical self but mostly an expression of personality, emotion, memory, and mind— the stored, unseen, and expressed aspects of what constitute our interactions and perceptions of the world. As the sun begins to dip beneath the clouds, I pack up the rest of my things, setting all but my notebook out of sight. In a lingering image in the pink hued sky, the tears of my past fall again— now understood. It seems that by taking my existing framework and using it to realize parts of myself difficult to figure out, I am to further support that framework to make it seem more genuine. That examination of specific unknown aspects of self through the broader known aspects of self seems to be effective in providing a richer answer to that burning question of “who am I?” Another wave crashes against the shore, striking the rock gently, capturing— with great accuracy— my present state of mind. Peaceful, calm and serene, all I wonder in this moment is “who are you?”

Clueless!

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/12/cao_tries_to_crack_black_caucu.html

Just go and read some of the comments on this link. They're far too short sighted and misinformed. Apparently racism has vanished and Black people are really racist toward white people. However, in my own experience, I just recently I had a conversation with a white man who identified as a DEMOCRAT who used the n-word during this conversation. Old attitudes and beliefs do not die so quickly. It seems vitriol is masked in public but escapes in close, private company. It makes me wonder how many other people, even those who identity as Democrats, share similar views.

Very much related is the article about race and Hurricane Katrina on The Nation website. I have really been more incensed and saddened in reading an article before. Apparently in the Algiers, which is a neighborhood located just across the river from New Orleans, Black individuals were trying to escape the floodwaters. However, once in Algiers they were shot and harassed by local white individuals. In one of the interviews conducted, these people are referred to as 'it'. This 'it' is significant because it emphasizes a dehumanization of persons based on race. These Black individuals become sport animals; like deer or elk, the one who shoots the most receives the most praise.

It is so deeply unsettling to hear both those who identify as Democrats and those who are but a half hour away express such racist and hateful ideology. Any consciousness of white privilege or racial inequities, undeniable anywhere you look in New Orleans, is non-existent. I wonder what other people think about this and if there is any hope for a more just New Orleans and surrounding areas based on race.

Past

Sunsets

Something about sunsets always gets me,
but what exactly it is seems obscured,
as if it was shrouded by a dense fog.

Perhaps it is the fact that every colour is never the same.
One day you have vivid pinks,
the next you have bold oranges and reds.
Or in the case of the other night,
a deeply unsettling purple coloured smoke from factories.

Perhaps it is because they represent a certain finality,
the end of a day,
the passing of time.
Whereas sunrises are invigorating,
sunsets bring about a rumination.
You think not of what you will do,
but what you have done.
It's as if you are untying the knot you made for yourself in the day,
working backward to deconstruct what has gotten jumbled.

Or perhaps it is that sunsets are just so wondrous
because they are always unexpected,
mirroring the life with leave with a certain
aesthetic beauty our own experiences almost certainly do not have.
Part of the beauty is the colour, but equally as important
is the arrangement of these colours, the whole image,
the canvas.

Whatever the case may be,
I have witnessed two of the most beautiful sunsets
in quite some time,
leaving me deep in thought and looking
forward to the end of another day.

On the Holidays

I am not coming home to Wisconsin for the holidays. Anybody who I tell this to seems shocked or confused.

Why on Earth would I not want to come home for Christmas?
Am I shielded some dark and deep secret?
Am I secret repressing my hatred of my family?

No, I am not. My family, like any other, has its fair share of problems. But they are not really the reason for my absence in Kenosha this holiday season. Instead, I intend to stay away because I spent the better part of three months this past summer with disappointed results, to say the least. I don't feel the need to repeat a particular unhappy that I have tried to get away from in going to another state to study for school. At least here in New Orleans I'll be able to get out rather easily and see the great line-up of movies coming to Canal Place Cinema. Since I don't drive and don't have a car, I'd basically be trapped inside for the better part of a month. I can't deal with that.

But I am also staying for one other very important reason: the weather! I mean, I have been living in New Orleans since August. Yes, it did snow once last week for a couple of hours. But with temperatures in the 70s today, it it is something like 55 degrees warmer than in Kenosha. I'll take that any day. I was just out walking the other day in flip-flops and still saw plenty of green, with butterflies around me. That sight is something you cannot beat in the middle of December.

But enough of this talk, I am off to read Marquis de Sade on a friend's recommendation. I am not really looking forward to it, I will admit. But at least there isn't a snowstorm coming.

A Grim Beginning

I always find myself searching for a bit of peace and quiet. Yet I always end up like the soda can in this picture, trapped beneath a layer of ice, aware of my situation but unable to break through. I know exactly what I want but am completely powerless to change it. I try with everything I have. Every bit of spirit pours out, fueled by any dream ever conceived in my oversized head. From the obnoxious desire in fourth grade to be a weatherman to the desire now to see political artifice be obscured by genuine change, I push forward, unrelenting. But then comes that terrible moment. The sun vanishes. The flowers seem to lilt. The air stiffens and becomes heavy. Every bit of spirit is useless. That is the situation now. A grim beginning. A critical juncture that could mark a relatively consistent set of behaviours and goals or a dramatic upheavel that could set me down a path that I do not want to take. Thus I think most deeply and carefully, hoping for a way out of the listless air and unassuming malaise. What I feel most dear about depends on it.