Dissonance

I saw a play. I beautiful piece of theater that slammed into my head and exploded like a pipe bomb amongst my perceptions. Eric(a) at Plan-B Theatre in Salt Lake City is a profoundly moving piece about the nature of identity, gender, and what it's like to fall in love for the first time. I had fully anticipated that it would be good. Plan-B does solid work. And Matt Bennett, Jerry Rapier, and Teresa Sanderson are truly fantastic thespians and artists. I even began writing my review of the play in my head a few days before I even saw it. I knew it would be worth watching.

What I didn't expect, what I couldn't have expected was what it would help me see about myself.

The transsexual experience is something that I've spent time thinking over, but ultimately always came to the same conclusion. I don't get it. You accept your meat for what it is. You learn to love yourself as you are. Now, I never saw any problems with cross dressing or dressing as masculine and feminine as you please. Hell, I once wore a gold tu-tu to school in highschool, and was infamous for randomly wearing a skirt during my college years. I love playing around with gender stereotypes. In my writing, in the games I play. A character I played in a tabletop roleplaying makes some of my old friends to this day swear that I was somebody's african american grandma in a past life.

So I sincerely have no qualms with the core idea. The part I can't understand is once you reach the surgical cosmetic level. That's the point that just makes me sad. For the same reasons that all cosmetic surgeries just make me sad. Being a little unhappy with your meat is fine as long as it drives you to better yourself. As long as you're healthy it shouldn't matter what you look like on the outside.

Now there's been a comparison I've heard before comparing the need for surgical modification to things like cleft pallet or reconstructive surgeries after accidents. They've compared the emotional pain of the cognitive dissonance to the physical pain of the people who have suffered these accidents. I'm not one to say either way. Just the point that's brought up. I don't see them as the same thing, but I'm not going to judge. I think that cosmetic surgery is cosmetic surgery. Sometimes it's needed for quality of life, more times it's not. It becomes a manifestation of self-loathing many times I've seen.

I can respect that it's an attempt to cope with the dissonance of their existence. An attempt to silence the pain of feeling like society is tearing you apart from within. If the meat reflects the spirit, then that dissonance will stop seems to be the thinking.

Now, I'm not sexually dimorphic. I'm genetically male, and identify as such. So I don't get the gender identity component. However, internal/external dissonance? That I have in spades. That part I understanding. Feeling like if only this one thing was different than everything else would fall into place has been my average Tuesday since I was a little boy.

I see spirits. I interact with a world that others can only sense and many more don't think exist at all. In this era, I'm a madman. A few hundreds of years ago? I'd have been a Shaman. I'd have a place of honor in my community and could devote my life to making things better for those I could. I have felt like I was a relic of a bygone era for most of my life. I was born into the wrong time. And I see a bit of a synergy with those born in the wrong body. That play pointed me to it in a way I would never have anticipated.

I feel joined with them, not by a profound harmony, but by our mutual dissonance. A paradox of existence that out of its necessity I have embraced. I have learned to love the delightful tension of things not being quite right. I recognize that few would be willing or able to live their lives like this, and they shouldn't have to. I just have found a way to be balanced, and healthy, within my own contradiction.

And I sincerely wish I could share the beauty I see in the asymmetry, if only for the moment. And let my brothers and sisters see how beautiful they are regards of anything the world or themselves demand of them.

Perfection

When I was still Mormon I spent a LOT of time contemplating the nature of Perfection. Though it's not one of their Articles of Faith or Pillars of their beliefs the concept of "perfection" is a very important and ingrained one. It is in fact point so important that when I had a very hard time understanding what exactly that meant it caused a great deal of friction, and lead to the default "Gods ways are not our ways" or what I like to call "you'll find out when your dead" cause they didn't know how else to answer. But it was something I became truly obsessed with. This idea of perfection. It brought so many interesting questions.

As a Perfect being will I be able to do things I was never able to?

What's the point of striving to learn a skill if you're suddenly gonna be "perfect" at it after death?

How well does Jesus play the banjo?

Was Christ the template of Perfection that we all needed to become like and if so how far could we deviate from that and still be Perfect?

How does individuality play into the Template of Perfection?

When I was still Mormon these questions haunted me. Cause nobody could explain it. Some of that is my own fault. I distilled down the entirety of my issue into a simple (and absurd) question. And is the very nature of the absurd, it make you think in ways that are not comfortable. So a lot of times it's waved to the side because you've asked it in an overly simplified way.

I never got my answers then. And so I took all that effort and turned it to creating my own solution to the problem of perfection. In the end I came up with three.

The Three Perfections

Chaos: (The first I came up with and the one that seems to most closely mimic the vaguest definitions of Perfection.) This idea of Perfection is striving towards a being for which anything can be done with ease. Of course Jesus can play banjo like a master, he's perfect. Everything can be done with ease.

So why do I link this idea to a concept as generally negative as Chaos? Because if there was even one such individual with no flaws who could do everything like a master, do everything better then everyone else, the system would tear itself apart. Why try? Just call up Jesus, he's going to do it better.

Or what if as Mormon theology dictates, we are all to be made perfect? Why should I deal with anyone else when I can do EVERYTHING as well as they can? I probably wouldn't. It creates a homogeny.

It's our negative traits that give shape to our personalities. Overcoming or learning from them lets us become more complete.

If you are Perfect like Chaos is Perfect, then you're either indistinct from any other Perfect Being, or you're incomplete, which makes it hard to be truly called Perfect.

Shark: The shark is arguably a perfect killing machine. It's fundamental design hasn't shifted in millions of years. It has a niche and it serves its own perfect purpose.

This is the one that I identify the most with. Because it's an attainable Perfection. Where as the Perfection of Chaos requires supernatural assistance I can focus and strive and become Perfect in my niche. I can strive and work and become perfect at what I do. It's something we can grasp at and strive for because it's focused down.

Cog: Regardless of our flaws as long as we serve our purpose within a perfect machine, then we ourselves are also made perfect.

This last one came to my understanding later then the others as I was thinking about some of the different ways Christian denominations look at their relationship with God and how they could achieve the Perfection of Shark. There's a starkness and brutality to the concept of Shark that would not appeal to many I'd think, but the Cog is something more clean.

And it implies forgiveness. The machine is what's perfect so your own imperfections will be purified in it's glory.

At least, those are my answers to the Ultimate Question of Perfection...
1. Jesus can play the banjo like a master. Because he's perfect like Chaos.
2. No. He can't. Cause sharks don't play banjo's.
3. Yes. Because others in the Divine Machine can shore up his lack of Banjo skills.

And that's what I came up with.

Madness

My Nana is currently in hospice. She's deteriorating quickly. Her skin is gently draped over her bones as she scouts around in her wheelchair. She may not last another year. Yet despite all this, I have a very hard time going to visit her. Seeing her like that... well it reminds me that within my genetic potential lies my single greatest fear. The one thing that haunts my nightmares. It's not death. It's not even seeing those I care for being harmed or leaving me. Those are all parts of life that you have to be aware of and come to terms with.

I'm afraid of going insane.

I've always been a little crazy. And not just in the "He so crazy" kinda way. In the diagnosable mental illness kind of way. I've had panic attacks, minor delusions, depressive episodes, and ended up thinking so quickly I felt like my brain was going to burn. I've even lost arguments with myself. And that's something that takes a particular breed of madness to accomplish. I've heard the whispering shadows and had to teach myself through long and terrible practice what is the ravages of a diseased brain and what's intuition.

It's a difficult balance to find. But it's what I have to do. Because there's the option to drug myself into oblivion. Or drink and smoke and snort myself till it all goes away, or becomes so exaggerated that I'm not longer able to care. The thought crosses my mind from time to time. Not with any temptation, but with a certain practical assessment of options.

Many of the people closest and dearest to me have all had their madnesses. My mother has anxiety. My grandfather has OCD such that at one point he was showering upwards of four times a day and had his doctor tell him that he was washing his skin down the drain with all the scrubbing. My grandmother lives in a state of complete delusion. My father is on social security because of his almost crippling depression.

I know madness. I've seen it. Tasted it's grim nectar. I've felt my mind play tricks on me and have before been confused about what's real and what's not.

It's the razor's edge I must walk. In other cultures, in other times, I'd be a shaman. A walker between this world and the other world. But here, and now? I'm a rather exceptional madman. A unique and distinct creature that cannot help but suckle at the tit of insanity. The insight and creativity I gain from this state is profound. I see the world in a completely different way then most others.

But the cost of that... is that I get to worry. I get to wait for the tinkle of glass as my mind breaks. I hope it's as beautiful as I imagine.

Buddhism

Another requested topic!

I've always had a bit of a love affair with Buddhism. It was one of the first things I remember reading that lead me on the path away from Mormonism and ultimately Christianity.

There are many ideas that I came to through that study of Buddhism that stay with me today and are key pillars in my own spiritual understanding. Things that I am radically under qualified to talk about, but this is the internet so here's what I think.

Buddhism and in particular Zen Buddhism will always have a very special place in my heart. One of the first books I read about spirituality was a book on Zen Buddhism. I had only read one other book that questioned what was being said in Sunday school and that was a book on animal totems.

I found it fascinating. I think I read it at least three times. I think I actually read it in the middle of church meetings on a number of occasions. There was a beauty and complex simplicity to the ideas presented. It talked both of the importance of the Self and also of rejecting the Self as the ultimate goal of all meditation and Zen practice. Now I don't know how accurate it was, or even how well I've retained all the data but I remember how deeply I was moved. In that book I found one of the first things that I truly identified with that wasn't part of the Mormon cannon. The idea of Zen meditation. And that with Zen focus, anything and everything could be a meditation.

What a beautiful idea! If I devote all that I am into doing the dishes and work towards that perfect Zen focus it can become as much a ritual as breathing under a waterfall, or chanting mantras in the temple.

There's a simplicity and practicality that made it easy for that belief to become one of my most important ones. But there are others that moved and changed me.

Growing up in the Mormon church can be a difficult thing. Particularly when you deviate from the norm in a place like Utah. Utah is a place that seek homogeny like it is the same thing as Perfection. I bring this up not because I want to talk about Mormonism or Utah, but to allow for a complete understanding of why the thousand Paths to Enlightenment truly stayed with me. In Utah Mormonism, and even more so in the parts where I grew up, there is a firm and unyielding take on the idea of the Iron Rod.

With my understanding as a child, there was only one way to salvation. Only one right choice. As I got older that began to nag at me. The level of logistics require to make sure that everybody got a chance to follow the One Path seemed deeply prohibitive. It seemed as if God had set up millions or billions of people to fail, and I couldn't understand how that could be so. This was also during the time that I was struggling with keeping to the church rules and was tearing myself apart over and over again trying live up to it. It put so much stress and so much strain on me that it was completely unsustainable.

But then I learned of the thousand paths to Enlightenment. It's an idea in Buddhism (once again more a Zen thing) that there is no single correct path.

The Great Way has no gate;

there are a thousand paths to it.
If you pass through the barrier,
you walk the universe alone. -Wu-Men ( The Enlightened Heart, Edited by Stephen Mitchell, p. 46)

When I was a sad young man already feeling like the Iron Rod was going to lead me far from happiness, this came like a shaft of light.

The last of the things I took away from my time studying Buddhism was "The Middle Way". The importance of moderation. There's many different ways to interpret that concept. But here's my take, and it's not a very Buddhist one. Everything has value, and everything can be dangerous. Through diligent moderation and seeking the middle path, the one of compromise, we can sort through and find the best way of going forward. It's not a matter of strictly taking the Middle Path but finding the worth and middle path in everything.

Even for negative emotions, like lust, hate, gluttony, and rage. I view everything as serving some ultimate purpose. Which isn't entirely out of the middle way, but it's the tree that grew from it in my heart.

There is a great deal to talk about with Buddhism. Just like with any truly interesting religion, I haven't even scratched the surface of this. The Four Noble Truths, the Eight Fold Path, all of those and the thousand different sects inside it.

But I think this is a good first outing. 

Apathy

Today is the day that our society has agreed is about spending our resources to show our affections. It's the day where we have our fights, we eat our sweeties, and have a socially required and contractually obligated kiss. Perhaps we even make awkward love with the rest of our geographic area. But despite all that snark I've put into this already, I'm not bitter.

Because to be bitter, you have to care.

And for the first time since I understood what Valentine's meant and the first time as an (arguable) adult, today is just another Thursday. There's no magic that I feel I'm missing out on. There's no fairy tale I feel I'm owed. It's another day. And... that feeling is the most transcendent apathy I have ever felt. It's left an empty space where all that care, concern, loneliness, and obsession has been left to rot over years and years. And today it feels cleaned out.
Fresh.
Unsoiled.
A hole that can be filled in with whatever I want it to.
And today I will fill it with the beauty of Thursday. I will treat it as my first and most glorious Discordian Holy Day. For it is the very fact that today is without meaning, that gives it the most beautiful and glorious meaning.

But anyway. I'm sure you're reading this for my thoughts on Apathy. As it's the title and all.

Apathy is another of those things that is lumped in with the worst of humanity. And generally speaking, I think that it is rightly so. A great deal of the suffering in the world boils down to people's inability for an empathic connection or understanding with people they have not met. The bonds of human kind should be enough to have us all take care of and love one another. They really should.

But they aren't.

And as horrible as this may sound, I don't think they should be. Because caring for all of the billions and billions of human beings on this ball bouncing though an uncaring cosmos is too much. Add all the other animals and you're moving into the realms of madness. Caring for everyone as you do yourself is something only a Christ or a divine Mother Goddess could do.

And frankly, I am nether of those things. (I know. Total shocker. You'd think since I look so good in a dress... but nope. Nether of those things.)

I don't feel nothing when I hear of atrocities or the suffering of people far away. I just don't feel that much. It's usually over in a flash. Because I've trained myself to use my Apathy as a form of protection. I know that I'm immensely sensitive and feel things in deep and profound ways. So I have to be careful about what I allow myself to care about. So I pick and choose. I make the horrible decision that many others fear and I decide who I can care about and who I can't.

Now not caring doesn't mean malevolence. I don't wish ill on people. I don't wish suffering upon them. To want bad things to happen itself implies that you care. And I only have so much give a shit.

So when it comes down to it, I only take the energy to care about what I can actually make a difference in. I'm working to devote my life to special needs pre-schoolers in at risk populations. I've supported and helped out every person I can even when all I could do was offer them a shoulder and ear.

I am not an apathetic person. But I can see why it's important. Why we haven't breed it out of ourselves just as of yet.