Causa Sui and the Artist

Cusa sui. Self-causing. Eliminate the past. No one, no thing has caused me. I am the cause of my self.

Really, this is the true lie of the self-made man. He relies on an impossibility for the justification of his success. Eliminate the past; eliminate biology. "From moment to moment, I am the sole (soul) generator of my self. I am the world, indeed, the universe."

Yet, I am not merely a product of the world. There are places in me the world can't reach - unless I voluntarily open those places to the world. Sometimes, it is only the causa sui delusion that gets one to open those places that, by choice, might otherwise remain hidden. Sometimes the causa sui delusion causes one to open certain places within to view while hiding others (e.g., Andy Warhol).

By maintaining the causa sui delusion, I can deny death. Since my selfhood is in the complete control of my self will, I can live forever if I will it. In fact, what sense would it make for the self to will itself out of existence if it truly believes itself to be causa sui?

But the doubt creeps in. More than simple doubt, desire creeps in. The desire for union. The causa sui self cannot truly love. The causa sui self cannot identify (or be identified) with anything else. The causa sui self is condemned to a lonely existence, much like a vampire, feeding on the emotions of others but never identifying with the emotions of others.

Drawn to union, the self must be open to death - again and again and again. The self must constantly view the destruction that awaits it. The self sees its destiny - annihilation, darkness, indistinctness. How can the self see this and not immediately disintegrate? Like a vibrating string, the self reverts to the loneliness of the causa sui delusion to return again to the desire for union to retreat again to causa sui ad infinitum.

How does this affect the artist? Perhaps to truly live as an artist, the artist must live with a consciousness of this vibration. Driven like all selves to assert complete independence, the artist must live self-consciously, with all that entails. Doing so, the artist faces the greatest loneliness in full knowledge that the causa sui delusion, necessary as it is to human psychic survival, is what it is - a delusion. The artist, driven by his own causa sui delusion, no matter how conscious he or she is of the drive, must consciously choose the places inside to expose to the world. The paradox? This drive to self-exposure, motivated by the causa sui delusion, is what puts the artist's self in most danger of destruction. True art always entails a reenactment of Plato's cave or the Christ story. For the most part, the truth, the good news, is rejected, human possibility is denied, and the artist's self is put in danger of premature annihilation.

I Left Borges . . .

I left Borges on the plane. Did he disembark to wander the lights and slot machines of Las Vegas? Did he smile knowingly to see the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Statue of Liberty, even the Eiffel Tower? Did he recognize himself in the everyman faces, black, white and every shade in between, wandering mesmerized through Coca Cola worlds, movie studio malls, the palace of the Caesars, candy-coated chocolate theme stores?

Or did he go on to San Diego where his Spanish world melds into his English world? Did he walk by the Bay, boarding the reproduction Spanish galleon or laugh in surprise at the silver cowboy who moves only when you approach closely? Did he take the trolley to cross the infinite, absolute border into Tijuana?

I left Borges on an easy chair in the hotel, a shadow of myself, sad, resigned, chastising me, telling me to leave youthful intoxication behind, to savor the mellow glow of later life. Sipping his wine, he says, "This you should know - because nowhere have I been at home, everywhere I have been at home."

Hiatus

Sorry for the absence, old friends. I was just gathering my thoughts.

Dark Neuro and the Mad Interview Game

Dark Neuro has invited me to her Interview Game. She has an intriguing site of the daily, the distinctive, and the decadent. Check her out.

The game works this way -

Want to be interviewed by me? Then here are the directions:

1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing (or commenting) you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

So, here are Dark Neuro's "interrogatories" with answers.

1. Your profile says you work for the government and you're a lawyer. Do you think you make more of a difference in law working for the government or in government working with the law?

Ah, a trick question, no doubt! I believe I would make more of a difference in law working for the government. But it is much more comfortable to be in government working with the law. I tend to be by nature timid and lazy. Great combo for a lawyer, right? So, being a bureaucrat is much more to my liking. To the extent I can, I try to balance mental/emotional self-preservation with the demands of family life (i.e., making enough money to pay the mortgage, allow my wife to shop occasionally, and have a pizza once a week or so). On some level, I like to think of myself like Einstein, who worked away in a Swiss patent office while developing his incredible theories. Except I'm much older than he was and I have been putting off any kind of life project because, well, like I said, I tend to be timid and lazy and therefore seek comfort.

2. You're stranded on an island where someone has thoughtfully left you a waterproof casket with 1 book. What would it be and why?

Little, Big by John Crowley. No book has hit me more in my life. It's filled with magic and the yearning for a world before the magic started to slip away. It's full of great thoughts, worlds within worlds, imagination, possibility, and loss. Plus there are faeries. It appeals to everything that is Irish in me. I've read it twice in my life (I'm not one for re-reading books), and time on an island would be just the opportunity to spend exploring its hidden passages.

Of course, The Illustrated Joy of Sex for One might come in a close second.

3. What is your favorite beverage of choice and why?

Right now, Chocolate Royale SlimFast. It's a meal in a can and does a pretty good job holding off my hunger. A close second would be Guinness served in an Irish pub (in Ireland) where "the Guinness is good." Why? It is the sacramental drink of my forebears, a Celtic yin-yang of dark and light, smoothness and bitterness. Served up in a glass reminiscent of the womanly shape, it draws one closer to the pre-Christian Celtic goddesses and to the Virgin Mary herself. It's a mystical experience.

4. What is your favorite curse word? What situations do you use it in? Could you use a different word? Why or why not?

Sorry to keep harping on the Irish theme, but it has to be good old "fuck," only delivered with an Irish accent (pronounced "fook," like the word "look"). The Irish have made of fuck a very versatile word. I particularly like to exclaim, "Fook it!" for no particular reason at all. Also, as a term of affection to my dear wife, I like to tell her, "Fook you," delivered in a calm reassuring voice. And every so often, I just have to let the whole world know how I feel by exclaiming, "Fook the lot of ye!"

5. What is one food that you refuse to try? Why?

Aside from human flesh (you just don't know where it's been), I would have to say any kind of insect. In the spring, I recall seeing an infestation of cicadas in the Midwest that led one lady to start frying them up for a crunchy treat. I'll stick to carrot sticks. Other than that, I'm pretty open. I have never tried anchovies and have no great desire to, but I'm sure I could persuade myself if the necessity arose. Bull testicles aren't too high up there on the list either.

So, if anyone else is up to an interview, just let me know in the comments.

Labyrinthine Wanderer

"The predilection of strength for questions for which no one today has the courage; the courage for the forbidden; the predestination to the labyrinth." Nietzsche, Preface to The Antichrist

My journey has certainly been labyrinthine. I talk of a spiritual journey, but that is so much yuppified New Age rubbish. What is a spiritual journey? It is "the desert of the real," as Morpheus refers to it. I am still parched. I still thirst. If only I had the certainty of hanging on a cross, a soldier ready to wet my lips with bitter wine. No. I have to keep searching. It's what I do.

I started in the darkly scented halls of Catholicism. Even now, a church draws me back to safety, to motherly warmth. I know its false; it does not take itself long to reveal its artifice. Behind the sacristy walls, unspeakable things happen to young boys. Perverse love-fires are lit; then, as quickly, doused. Softly feminine features become distorted under the nun's habit. Whiskers sprout. Hair slicked back with Vitalis. The ever-present fifteen inch ruler designed especially for punishment. Drive a fear so far into their heart that rebellion will seem an impossible imagining. Don't make them fear hell. It does not have so near the power of making them fear themselves first, then through themselves us.

In secondary school, they sanitized it, psychologized it, therapized it. It lost its power, leaving only the corpse of the monster. I could safely step over it, its open maw rendered harmless. It was really about the ground of all being – whatever the hell that meant. It was really about climbing up Maslow's pyramid, becoming "truly human" – whatever the hell that meant.

I lost it on a soft summer day in Ireland, tipsy on pints of Guinness and late for church. Much too late. I joined a few of the boyos in the back, there to check out the talent and to keep their parents at bay. In a conspiracy of silence, one of them and I vowed not tell. We were leaving. So far as I know, he never told. Neither did I. I ran back to the pub with wings on my feet, ready to receive the sacraments. Still, I could not quench my thirst.

My feet carried me back into the desert; I had been banished. Forevermore, I would live outside the walls of that medieval bastion. Now, I was a stranger. And strange it was, even to this day, to walk its streets, to feel the invisible wall that separates me from people I loved, people I would have died for. They don't know me. It's all a dream, I think. But it's real. The dreams are even more painful. It wasn't so much that I had abandoned the gods of the polis. I had dared to pass through its walls, to go to the place where the gods lived. And there? I found nothing. Or perhaps such a chaos of fullness that, well, it might as well have been emptiness. It was certainly a sort of madness.

Buddha. I tried. I still try. Why when he points to the emptiness do I see instead dead colors, purposeless movement, always. And the melding of all things into amorphous oblivion. I am destroyed, not by the void but by the all. Still, I try. I chant. I breathe. The muscles knot in the back of my neck. I brace myself for the next leg of my journey.

Because it's all the same, right? Buddha. Christ. Mohamed. Lao Tzu. The Prophets. The Shamans. Jim Morrison. Why not unite them? Why not universalize them? So I found myself the church that unitizes and univeralizes. Only, I kept asking myself, "What's the point?" It was like wandering through the desert only to find a group of people lost as I am listening to a lecture about the desert from someone who is just as lost as everyone else. We're in the fucking desert, for Christ's sake? Don't tell me about the desert. Don't invite me to explore the desert. What good has it done you? What good is it doing anyone here? We're not getting anywhere. Intellectualizing, theorizing, sermonizing are not going to get us out of this arid place. And don't tell me that the soul is looking for some kind of happy, undisturbed pseudo-magical state of peace. The soul wants movement.

So, I left the sparse shade of that place. And I travelled on, longing again to be inside the walls where no one knew me, though I had spent a lifetime with them. Perhaps I could sneak in through the back door. Perhaps I could get all the trappings – the bishops, the ceremony, the INCENSE! Oh, how I love incense burning in the thurible. It takes to me heavenly days of lost youth when I was inside the walls, though already being called to exile. The Anglified church let me feel momentarily like I was back in the walls, that somehow I had found the hidden entryway, without the intense burden of sin and punishment. But the incense lacked fire; it only had scent. It was an attempt at the passion of youth but limited itself to the mind. The soul was intellectualized.

Again, I wandered around the labyrinth, hoping to find the tunnel beneath the walls. I prayed, meditated, sang, screamed, moved, returned, dipped toes in foreign waters, played my cards and sought my future. All to no avail. In desperation, I even sought out those who preached most confidently that one could so easily return inside those wall for a simple confession of faith in the person of Jesus Christ. I grabbed hold of this belief, even as I had feared it for years. I tried to believe that, yes, the mere speaking of the words, whether by head or heart, would magically transport me inside. But they didn't. Instead, I was stuck inside a rented building with nice people who might have belonged to any organization of middle class folks – the Kiwanis, the Elks, Rotarians. It was nice and comfortable and full of self-confident certainty. But there were monsters on the road home and otherworldly sounds. Most disturbing of all, the monsters, the sounds called to me, appealed to me, finally, liberated me.

I'm still in the labyrinth. At times, I feel like I should feel comfortable here, but I realize the labyrinth was not built for comfort. It was built for life, for reality (whatever that is). Inside the walls was just a sort of museum, a living exhibit. People took on characters for the day, while I was around. It was really believable. But at night, they themselves went home to the labyrinth – whether they knew it or not. The city behind the walls remained, deserted, lifeless. A sort of theatrical set.

I pass them here in the labyrinth now. They either vaguely recognize me or don't recognize me at all. That suits me now, though a hidden part of me comes out every so often to yearn for the Disney-like non-reality of the world behind the walls. But the mystery is here. The possibilities are here. The soul can only live here.

Ulysses - Postscript I

Da-di-da-di-di-di-da rap-a-too-ba-doo-ba-da-ba-da-ba-doo. What do they want now? Doug. How does he know it's me he knows its me cause the name came up on the screen. Oh. Interim fix in place. The best we can do for now. Door leaning, hinges hanging. Plastic piece broken. Glued on some tubing. Need a fix of glue and then a good tubing. Part on order.

>What time are you open to.

>About twelve.

Downstairs for a delicious shake. Dog's up. Up and atom. Atomic powered dog. Already taken out. Doesn't matter. Probably already pissed somewhere. Marking his territory. Marking my time.

Things to do on the Web. Intense research. Wife must believe I am up here searching for solutions to decorating problems. Last night I decorated the toilet in splattery brown. Dog decorated the sofa leg in brilliant amber. Without decoration, what would life be?

MILFs. Lesbians. Love it. Used to just look at the pictures. Now, videos. Devices, once frozen in time, now move. I move. Tongues. Fingers. Stockings. Garters. Suspenders they call them in Bloom's place and time. Bloom always in suspense. Not me. I need relief.

Hands. Tissues. Baskets. Pearly drops. Not for the pearly whites. Baggy plastic stains doesn't stain. Legs, shoulders, breasts, buttocks, walls.

Adhesive stained walls. How do you remove it from the walls. Mastic. Masturbate. This Old House is dripping down around me. Moments pass. Minutes. Hours. Aeons. It's hard.

Hair. Mouth. Stomach. Car. They're home. Shit. Close tab.

Ulysses Revised

Consider this. Joyce went back and revised Ulysses. He said he had found a bunch of mistakes that he needed to fix. Recently, the secret complete revised manuscript was found. It turns out the original was filled with awkward sentences, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, fused sentences, and assorted mistakes that made it past an obviously incompetent editor. The whole thing actually makes sense and is really an easy to follow narrative of a cuckold and his young friend. The whole thing ends with everyone living happily ever after, Ireland being freed from the British, and liberty/fraternity/equality reigning across an Ireland filled with maidens spinning wool and singing softly by the cabin door. Who knew?

The Future's So Bright . . .

Had a good talk tonight with the missus. I thinks she sees what I'm trying to say. I think she knows I need someone to talk to - my wife. I think I'm beginning to understand this is the biggest piece of the puzzle for me. Now, we can start a dialog about where I'm going, where she's going, and how we get there together.

Steppin' in a Slide Zone

Had a brief dream this morning with a big impact on my day. I was holding my wife and crying, balling. I was crying because each day brought us closer to parting through death. But I was also crying over all the hopes and dreams we had when we were younger that seem to have slipped away.

Many times in our marriage, my wife and I have had an uneasy truce. She is much more concerned with financial safety and stability then I ever was. Her past has giver her some reasons for this. I have been more concerned with avoiding rocking the boat with some of my wilder imaginings about what life could be. They rarely take into account things like money. I dream of communities of sharing, loving, giving people working together on creative projects. I dream of writing, singing, playing music all at once with others, online, however it works out, just to be creating and dreaming. I dream of communities of sharing, loving, giving people educating themselves and each other together to build stronger understandings of the human experience and the potential for good in each one of us. I dream of long hours reading, discussing, debating, creating, imagining without regard to schedules or times. I dream of people working to create a new world - or even worlds - to inhabit and grow. I dream of communities of sharing, loving, giving people working together in a spirit of openness, experimentation, and adventure on spiritual projects to explore the limits and perhaps the limitlessness of human mind/soul/spirit. I dream of giving without expectation of return, loving without assurance of reciprocation, creating without an expectation of ownership.

None of these things are currently listed anywhere as career paths that will provide much or indeed anything of a living. How do you express this to a wife who has feared most of her life for her financial well-being? How do you express this when any time you have tried to raise this before it ended with fear, anger, resentment, and a shutdown of communication? How do you express this when the world would call you a nutcase for spending so much time on such imaginings? How do you express it when so much of it is inexpressible?

Perhaps I'm childish and immature. Perhaps I'm lazy, undisciplined, and directionless. Perhaps - but I need to know. So, the dream served as a vehicle to broach the subject once again. It went roughly, with more tears, fears, resentments, arguments, and communication breakdowns. But there is hope that it won't end that way. I love her so much. My two greatest fears in life are losing her and losing myself, and sometimes these pull me in opposite directions.

Life and Simulation

Life and simulation - the distinctions are being lost and lost completely. First, we had life. After that, simulation. Before long, we had the simulation of simulation. Witness Anna Nicole Smith. In many ways, she was a simulation of the Marilyn Monroe mystique. Now, her life will soon become a made-for-TV movie.

Thinking, Feeling, and Problem-Solving

Our society discourages reflection. Things must happen now - or as near to now as possible. Taking time to think and feel slows things down. It threatens the existing order. It may even call into question whether what we have been calling thinking and feeling is really thinking and feeling at all. Real thinking and feeling are subversive of the existing order, where the generally accepted idea of thinking is "problem solving" and usually of the kind that has fast benefits. Be a revolutionary - think and feel.