January 23, 2012
On Relationships: Loving Another (Romantic)

It has been a while, and instead of taking the time to apologize, suffice it to say that I now have time to continue to expound upon these questions and the drive to do so – all the result of a shattered heart (and not necessarily my own).  That being the impetus, and in response to a question long ago, it’s time to expound upon the theme: love.   

 

This is not going to be a list of quotes, a series of examples, and argument as to why.  Love is entirely subjective – people understand it differently, so no one can argue over who is right about love.  You can only make a feeble attempt validate arguments about love by basing them on the ephemeral parameters and statistics of emotion or abstract standards that people may find the most important from their own perspective:  Who’s way of loving hurt the other person more?  Which love really helped the couple grow in the relationship and/or as individuals?  What was it about their love that really made them so successful?  When you ask someone about love, cut through this crap and know that no one has the answer, only the lessons of their own experience.  So, this?  This is the way I see love. The way a self-described hopeless romantic, with arguable self-confidence issues, and a track record of serial long-term relationships - each with their own lessons – views love.  And I invite anyone to present their own perspectives in return, not necessarily as a counterargument, but as the briefly shared uniquely intimate perspective of one of two “Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing; Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.” (Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn. Part iii. The Theologian’s Tale: Elizabeth. iv). 

 

Love has a feeling, a dynamic, and a hope.  Love encompasses the head, the heart and the entire being, and it’s when these all disagree that conflict arises.  But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, this is how I see love. 

 

My CounterPoint Theory of Finding Love

  

I wake up every morning with a song in my head and the day ahead of me.  I gauge my obligations and the demands for the day, gloss over the dreams that my spirit had incarnated in my prior state of consciousness (the dreams within the dream), register a passing footnote reminding me to try and live a full and happy life today (with the peripheral invitation of my sotto voce quickly engulfed in the cacophony of my spirit setting the fortifications and targeting the obstacles to withstand the day), and all quickly silenced by the hope that I placed my glasses in a memorable location preferably within arm’s reach.  These are the voices, this is the dialogue, the argument, the defensiveness, the personality all bursting into consciousness within the first fraction of the day – and it doesn’t stop.   

 

[Some have suggested this could be a manifestation of Attention Deficit Disorder – an argument which has merit in the fact that when I recently tried Adderall (prescribed, of course), my one overwhelming reaction was a shocking silence in my head, which made me feel an foreigner in my own body – an uncanny existence.  Wholly unnatural to me, I stopped for fear that my mind would never return.  But like the thousands of symphonies you can extract from wind through the trees (or even deafening silence), the white noise returned and life hummed once again – almost the way a city hums the whole time you are in it, and you only miss it during a blackout or in the fraction of a second following the collective gasp of tragedy.  I’m digressing…] 

 

If we are lucky, we have that voice in our head every day that we may or may not know is there.  The voice that explains that you should avoid the dog poop on the sidewalk, as you dodge a mail carrier from whom you should avert your eyes given the fact that his job is in jeopardy (read: USPS shutdown) or that his hunch belies a disgruntled mail carrier the likes of which have a reputation of instability or merely that to make eye contact would invite conversation for which you don’t have time.  You make excuses for things, snap judgments of situations, and then when you have time to think, the mind is still racing telling you to not take the middle finger or insult from the homeless man on the subway as a personal affront, while you ask yourself what you really want out of life, out of love – whatever that is.  And you doubt.  That is key.  No matter how confident you are in anything in your life, you learn to accept the doubt that you may be right (e.g. “Am I some sort of some sort of bigot for stereotyping mailmen?” , or doubt that you have all the right facts (e.g. “What if there was a reason to dislike mailmen?  I’m sure there could be one, I can’t be the type of bad person that stereotypes an profession otherwise idyllic and familiar in small town settings on TV?”), or even doubt that the voice you have is your own (e.g. “Is that my mother’s voice? My Catholic guilt?”; “Should I care about being a bad person, or should I accept that because that is who I am and move on?  Maybe I should…I just don’t know.”). 

 

Then, if you are truly lucky, you find the one.  Or, the one of the many.  But at least the one that has the capacity to listen to the world inside your head, understand it.  The one whose own reeling mind proves foreign and familiar to you at once – even in just a glance. Two minds, or spirits, or whatever you want to call it, that can not only understand (not in a mathematical way, and not even just facts, but the algorithm) the way you exist in life, but accept it or at least be willing to become comfortable with it – and have the desire to pursue that connection.   When you find that person, you have found your voice outside of yourself that promises a way of existing in the world that had heretofore proven completely unknown except in storybooks and blog postings.  You hear your voice outside yourself, and it become real.  It all becomes real. You complete the dialogue outside yourself, with your counterpoint in reality, and now your voice is heard and it can grow… 

 

To find the counterpoint requires two major things: the voice and timing.  People usually say that a relationship is about being ready and then having the right timing, but I think that your voice is best poised to find it’s counterpoint when the doubt has plateaued to a relatively consistent level and you have stabilized who you are at your core and now have the dialogue with which to grow… 

 

As a quick aside - I’m not usually one to quote song lyrics, but this verse from “On the Radio” by Regina Spektor, does seem to echo this thought even just a little bit: 

 

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don’t get harmed
But even if it does
You’ll just do it all again

 

My Theory Of What There Must Be In Perfect Love

  

For me, a lover is ideally also a teammate, a partner, even a constructive critic, but above all worthy of you trusting them with your inner voice.  At the same time, in the search for that counterpoint, and as love develops - the most important part of that love (at least for me) is growth.  (Complacency and/or mere momentum are never any reason to stay in a relationship).  When a relationship ends, and we reflect on who we were and who we became in that relationship (whether or not it ended on good or bad terms), and as we turn inwards we face outwards alone as changed people.  Those are the times where we are challenged to grow (and often grow the most), to understand and really find out again who are the best people we can be – but again without a counterpoint.

 

Therefore, I believe that the most important part of love – as you seek a counterpoint, as you seek to be whole outside of yourself – is growth.  Love is about growth.  Whether you are alone or with another, a great relationship (even between you and yourself) should promote your own positive growth and exploration in the context of a dynamic (and not complacent) comfort with the other (you and yourself, or you and another), that itself must be distinguished from often the fear, the pain or the exhilaration and delirium that growth brings with it. (e.g. “I so happy because of the person I am and want to become, and see myself becoming, with her support” and not “I am so happy because of what she makes me do.”) [A working concept, perhaps not yet ripe enough to clearly express here].  It’s about challenging who you are and working to become the best person you want to be for yourself, for the other person and for the relationship.  One subtle voice then becomes three, and the goal is to listen to all of that and make the life what you want it to be (…and be unstoppable). 

 

There are three ways that people grow in relationships.  In the ideal case, your partner sees the best person you yourself want to be (even if you can’t) and helps you explore and become that person.  You may have an idea of the best life you want to live or the best person you want to be, and they can provide a new and refreshing perspective, a context of support and motivation, a foundation of support that gives you the courage to try.  It is most often in this case of growth, where your lover is also a teammate, a partner, a reflection and more that they are worthy of you trusting them with your inner voice. (How exhilarating and comforting all at once it is to see yourself through your loved ones eyes without judgment or artifice, and see how strong and incredible their love is, and get just that glimpse of what that love can make possible.)

 

Then there are at least two other types of growth which present their own challenges, and can destroy a love.  In too many instances on the path to love (e.g. relationships that end up culminating in mid-life crises or divorce) the equation is as follows: Your partner sees the person they themselves want you to be, and change you and mold you into what they want.  Soon enough in the confusion that ensues, all you can see is what your partner made you, and things become uncomfortable, foreign, uncanny – you have become a stranger in your own skin.  This is a bad thing regardless of whether or not you like the person they made you because, when your partner changes you into something you don’t want to be, that breeds resentment in you (as you resent the other person for making you something that you can’t recognize), and in your partner who is changing you (because you have lose the identity that first caused your partner to be attracted to you, you don’t stand up for yourself or your identity, etc…).  This resentment can destroy a relationship… 

 

And lastly, there is growth as people grow apart – this happens all too often when people come to know each other more and know that they are not right for each other and end a relationship amicably.  Alternatively, similar circumstances include people in long distance relationships who grow apart in the day-to-day and become more foreign to each other whenever they get a chance to see each other.  Whether or not it is conscious, there are two easily recognized signs of a long-distance relationship: 1.) when meeting up after being apart one or both of the people in the relationship can feel an “adjustment period” where they try to recall who they were with each other and how comfortable they can be; and 2.) just before leaving, it is almost guaranteed in some relationships that someone (or both) will start a fight – to augment the emotional distance before the physical, to make the impending departure more bearable, and/or to voice that latent resentment of unfortunate circumstance.

 

So ideally, if you have a partner who can understand who you are (as a person and themselves as your counterpoint), who you want to be, and support that growth, then you need nothing else.  No matter what life throws at you, you know your reality is real, that you are growing, and that you can persist with the strength love provides. It is merely a fact - love is an absence of wanting or needing anything outside that love (even though so many fight for things to help preserve that love without realizing that real love can persist without and in spite of things).  Love is purely just the mutual awareness of being, and strength to become.

 

But love can sometimes not be enough…

 

So then why do some loves that seem to fit this profile fail regardless?

 

Timing.  Plain and simple. We all know it.  One person is more mature than the other. One person just got out of a relationship and is not yet ready for another.  That is just plain old timing.  That is the kind that people may think is easier to deal with – and it probably is.  Because the other problem with timing can yield vicious results – It is the timing it takes for someone to understand even a little bit of who they themselves are, begin to recognize some red flags regarding the emotions and history they are bringing into the relationship, and ultimately have the bravery to try and work through them either alone or with someone else.  I call these things “love-mines” because if you don’t see them, as soon as they are crossed they blow up in your face and can destroy the relationship.  The sad lesson that so many learn, though, is that sometimes those love-mines are only recognizable in the context of a first relationship (e.g. I’m an overly jealous and untrusting person)).  Some “love-mines” include weakness (in asserting yourself, in being present in a relationship), lust (seeking merely physical pleasure, or alternatively, relying on the addiction to physical pleasure to escape confrontation – (e.g. “Ok, can we get to the makeup sex already? I don’t want to talk about why I slept with your brother.”), confusion (acting in contravention to who you are whether you know it or not), loneliness (feeling like the other person will never understand you), despair, etc…  So, how do you work through all that, and is it realistic to do so under the relationship probation of having a break-up as an option?  Perhaps that’s why so many arranged marriages work – because coupled with societal/cultural pressures that may accompany arranged marriages, people are forced to learn who the other person really is.  But what if you are just in the dating world?  Well, you can help someone merely recognize their issues themselves or in the relationship (I once was asked on a first date “so what’s your baggage”? Everyone has some.”) and start from there.  And though there are movies and songs all about how you can “save” the one you love, I don’t know if I ever heard a healthy example of a savior complex but know it sometimes leads to pretty nasty circumstances such as battered woman syndrome or even Munchausen’s. Either way, I don’t have the answer here, people. Just more questions.

6:11pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/Z5Xj9yFFtZRn
February 5, 2011
Thank you…

….for answering my questions.  You make the two sides feel more like a interweaving dance than a conflicting fight. You talked about the discovery of self with external and internal development, but how can you apply that concept to something more… a relationship. To use your analogy, what if Heisenberg wasn’t measuring an electron, but the strength, flexibility and resistance between two molecules. We cannot as easily escape the singularity of the “self” or, in my opinion, one’s soul,  as easily as an external bond with others. Thoughts?

5:31pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/Z5Xj9y2wdK4U
February 3, 2011
On this Blog: Housekeeping Matters

I’ve “enabled answers” - whatever that means. But I think that means at least you should feel free to post responses or things that might be relevant to the blogs themes.

Also, if you have any recommendations as to how to organize things better here, let me know.

1:12am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/Z5Xj9y2tmsPF
February 3, 2011
Re: Is it always a choice?

Hm, it’s a strange sense not knowing to whom I am responding since I don’t recognize the e-mail fo the poster.  But, actually, I welcome that now - it prevents writing for a specific person or applying any spin other than my own perspective.  But now to the response. (By the way, comments like these are really greatly appreciated!  Not only do they induce me to continue to write, but it’s good to challenge one’s own perspective…)

So, from the comment, I understand that there are three points to be made:

1.) Why does the self and reality have to live on such opposite planes? Does being true to yourself always mean conflicting with the rest of the world?  Well, I don’t think the two live on “opposite planes” at all, but are more so adjacent planes whereby one can become more removed into the self or alternatively, into the reality.  I like to think of it as the water in the Caves special in the Planet Earth episode where fresh and salt water meet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePUlE1_tkwU&feature=related at 1:07) - there is a visible boundary, and you can drift from one or another bringing the water from the other with you, only to have it return to where it originated.  But regardless as to whether you are in the salt water or the fresh water, you are still under water and will only breathe freely with a clear understanding of both, once you are done with being exposed to one or the other.  So to answer the question simply, I say they are not planes in conflict, but planes from which to choose.

2.)  This leads  into an analogy that I recall using when I was younger, but which I think captures your apt recognition that external stressors are valuable for assisting us in determining who we are as “our purest selves”.  Essentially, (and forgive my lack of the requisite in-depth expertise to have fully understood the nuances of quantum dynamics at the time, or even now), there exists the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which posits that:

…it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and the momentum of an electron or any other particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty. This is not a statement about researchers’ ability to measure the quantities. Rather, it is a statement about the system itself. That is, a system cannot be defined to have simultaneously singular values of these pairs of quantities.

                        -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

One of the examples of this principle is called “Heisenberg’s Microscope” where one tries to measure the location and momentum of an electron by shooting a photon at it.  This is where I start to deviate from the science and draw parallels to our discussion.  Consider the electron on a plane “our pure selves”, and consider the fired photon any experience, external or internal, that tests our sense of self in an effort to try to “locate” who we are.  Now the problem with Heisenberg’s Microscope is that, regardless of the coordinates that one can measure from the refraction of the photon hitting the electron, by virtue of the experiment, the electron is no longer necessarily where it was or moving with the same momentum.  Just as with introspection, the act of trying to find out who you are, makes you someone different and you have to start over.  With external stimuli, the experience of the outside world testing you challenges who you are when the stimulus is applied, but does not necessarily how you have changed (that  requires introspection). 

So, the way I perceive this all is that, if there is a finite plane upon which our “selves” can exist, let’s call that plane reality.  Within that reality, our goal should be to test our selves as much as possible, to get out of our comfort zones, to really expose ourselves to that internal and external stimuli in order to get to who we are at our core - not exact location, but a general sense of region perhaps.  (Note: If our stimuli overwhelms ourselves, do you think we can get lost on the plane of reality? Can we alternatively get lost in ourselves?)  When the stimulus ends at the end of our lives, perhaps in that fraction of our last second can we see who we truly are and have been our entire lives.  Perhaps that what it means to see our lives flash before our lives - the moments that defined us…

3.) And that leads us to the third and final point.  You had asked what if one could change themselves to “solve a massive problem”.  I think you recognize “solve a massive problem” as an external stimulus, and that by changing ones self to solve that problem, one is essentially denying themselves.  It’s kind of like the saying “If you do what you love in life, you will not ‘work’ a day in your life.”  Well, if you do what you wanted, if you acted in conformity with your self, you would not have to tailor yourself as much to “solve the massive problem”. 

When you acknowledged that those in the Wizard of Oz went through a huge journey to acquire what people said they needed (a barrage of external stimuli and catering to an outside world), they came to limit their plane enough to realize that they had it already all along inside of them.  They reached a point of self-knowledge where they came to identify the region within their selves operated and that point, at that moment, was enough for them to achieve their goal.  So the crucial element is that the tin man was covered in some pure gold sheen as a byproduct of realizing, from his journey, that he had a heart all along and need only recognize it, as opposed to being covered in gold at the end because he came to a conclusion from reality telling him he should be covered in gold (someone saying “have a heart” in that case plating him in “fool’s gold”). [And what’s with the flying monkeys or book being used as a critique of the gold standard?] I think this example recognizes the need to be honest with ones self to make sure the gold sheen is a byproduct of one living actively from the inside out (not dominated by reality but acknowledging it’s presence), while also ultimately providing hope that one can achieve crucial strides in self-awareness while alive, without having to take “the final introspection”. 

Lastly, perhaps the process of realization is erratic and progressively minimizes the shifting plane to reveal to us more and more about ourselves, sure.  But perhaps the true value is not only within those seemingly erratic flashes of our “pure selves”, but in taking those moments to extrapolate the algorithm upon which the process of self-realization.  And then maybe the true value is not in figuring out the inputs and outputs of the experiment, or even where exactly we are on the plane as soon as possible, but how we act during the experiment - what are the experiences that can best let us prove to ourselves who we really are.  That then elevates us beyond the experiment of living life each day subjected to arbitrary experiments, whether more isolated in ourselves or the external reality living vicariously through us, and  reveals the truly valuable element of how we operate.  I think it’s kind of like people who go on really long trips to “find themselves” (kind of like the “walkabout” concept in Crocodile Dundee, I know, sorry…) when in fact they return and often times are the same person with a lot of souvenirs and neat stories but not having changed at all.

It’s late, but I’d like to end with this last note from T.S. Eliot who said it all more eloquently and less dorkily in “Little Gidding: No. 4 of ‘Four Quartets’”:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”

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(Notes: 2)
  
January 24, 2011
Is it always a choice?

What hurt me so much with the Black Swan, was that to become great, she had to sacrifice, as you said it, her sense of reality. Why do the two have to live on such opposite planes? Does being true to yourself always mean conflicting with the rest of the world?  In the Wizard of Oz, only after their long journey of yearning, the foursome realized they had inside of them what they were looking for all along.  Besides, the only way we get to know ourselves, is by testing the waters. If there were no external stressors, no societal obligations, no survival necessities, would we be the PUREST version of ourselves?  Or, is the purest version of ourselves exactly who we are under the EXTREME stress?

What if you could solve a massive problem, but to get to a position to solve it, you had to carefully tailor who you are. It is not really denying yourself but manipulating the world around you so that you can put yourself in a position to shine.  I guess if we’re like the tin man and the scarecrow, we better enjoy the journey, because that “shine” might be fool’s gold.

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January 8, 2011
On Relationships: Perspectives of Self

“The only thing keeping you from being great is yourself.” -Black Swan. 

It’s strange that I should return to the blog with such a different perspective than than with which I started writing. But I’m back, a new year, new resolutions. The primary of those resolutions is working to be truest to myself, by abandoning myself to pure self without context or judgment or any inner defeatist, ego-boosting or other dialogue,  and then being able to project that to others and stand up for myself.  No one ever had to apologize for being honest, no one ever had to apologize for being one’s self, nothing bad ever came from living life as you believe it.

The philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti stressed the need to abandon one’s self completely to live a pure life:

“Every movement of thought every action demands energy. Whatever you do or think needs energy, and this energy can be dissipated through conflict, through various forms of unnecessary thought, emotional pursuits and sentimental activities. Energy is wasted in conflict which arises in duality, in the “me” and the “not-me”, in the division between the observer and the observed, the thinker and the thought. When this wastage is no longer taking place there is a quality of energy which can be called an awareness - an awareness in which there is no evaluation, judgement, condemnation or comparison but merely an attentive observation, a seeing of things exactly as they are, both inwardly and outwardly, without the interference of thought, which is the past.

…It is so easy to deceive oneself, so easy to convince oneself of anything at all. The feeling that one must be something is the beginning of deception, and, of course, this idealistic attitude leads to various forms of hypocrisy. What makes illusion? Well, one of the factors is this constant comparison between what is and what should be, or what might be, this measurement between the good and the bad - thought trying to improve itself, the memory of pleasure, trying to get more pleasure, and so on. It is this desire for more, this dissatisfaction, which makes one accept or have faith in something, and this must inevitably lead to every form of deception and illusion. It is desire and fear, hope and despair, that project the goal, the conclusion to be experienced. Therefore this experience has no reality. All so-called religious experiences follow this pattern. The very desire for enlightenment must also breed the acceptance of authority, and this is the opposite of enlightenment. Desire, dissatisfaction, fear, pleasure, wanting more, wanting to change, all of which is measurement - this is the way of illusion…” (Excerpted from: http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=5&chid=495


So why did I start this post with a quote from Black Swan - a movie that many have found to be a horror movie, a suspense thriller, overall a disturbing movie? In the movie, the main character is perfect at being “herself” as the white swan, in an arguably dissatisfying life where she glosses over her impulses, her happiness in order to tenaciously pursue her dream of being the lead in Swan Lake.  Only, the director instructs her that she must emulate the Black Swan as well, that she must get in touch with that part of herself that she had otherwise been denying.  The first glimpse of her being in touch with herself completely is when she is metaphorically like a dog trapped in a corner, and she literally bites.  That is a glimpse into the part of her she has heretofore been rejecting! 

Only when the main character starts going crazy, letting go of her self, only then does she become great.  With the world falling apart around her, she knows what she wants,  identifies the one constant within her, and though it turns into a horror movie, there is such a quiet and sublime beauty in her insanity.  The quest for perfection is at the core of her being, and she doesn’t ever articulate it (until the end) because she doesn’t need to - it is achieved because she becomes all parts of herself at once, so perfectly.  The bittersweet beauty of the movie is that she doesn’t go insane, it is precisely that she accepts who she is without judgment or memory or anything else in order to truly live.  In order to do this she has to make an ultimate sacrifice - not even her life, not even the world she had known, but her entire sense of reality, her existence in the context of the rest of the world. 

Well, at first I thought that there must be something wrong with me because, despite all the horror and suspense, my take away was something so calming:

What is crazy?  Being true to yourself as the world around you falls apart? Or being true to the world around you when denying your own being?

I’m opting for the former this year.  I believe my constant, my core, is good.  But regardless, should the world fall apart around me, at least I know I’m living my life honestly, from the inside out, and not the other way around. 

I’m curious to see what happens.  I am a little crazy, but I prefer to believe that arises from a quirky joi de vivre.  And this resolution may lead to a year with a bit more conflict, but that conflict will be external as I express as clearly as I can to the outside world who I am on the inside.  Those who do not understand or care to understand that may see this expression as apathy, meanness, or even craziness, but it is none of that.  It is honesty and decency from the inside out, the absolution of inner conflict.  And those in my life who have already accepted me for what I am and who I am in all situations as I have struggled with the conflict of pleasing others, living the dreams of others, worrying about judgment from within or without - all who have seen this in the past, will not have to worry, the only repercussion is that they see the person they have come to know, in a more consistent and clear manner…

3:57pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/Z5Xj9y2ULXwc
November 19, 2010
I’m Back!

I’m Back!

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September 28, 2010
Silence as time

You talk about silence as a tangible, but what if silence is another way to recognize time?  When I think of silence, I think of reflection, a moment to take a step back from a situation to observe, or, in the case of a heated negotiation, how long the pause will last until the desired action is taken. In the same way a hunter must know how long to crouch in silence before a kill, an actor pauses before a word, or how many spaces a poet chooses in his/her stance doesn’t time play any part in how or when you come across these realizations? 

The silence you speak of in that quote recognizes that what we think of as a pause, is really recognizing that the rest of nature is in motion. What if the recognition is always there, but time is what tells us we are ready to see it?

4:07pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/Z5Xj9y17tTOI
September 19, 2010
Comment — Roaring Silence

hm. So much thought in a single post.

So “die” in the quote from Eliot — I believe it implies an inherent handicap in the human condition; That we [must] ignore the roar or rather, we cannot hear the roar because it is beyond our capacity to perceive. In hearing it, in perceiving something we inherently cannot, we would in a sense, die, and become something else. Something we’re not.

We are flawed creatures. We are limited in so many ways — lifespan, raw intelligence, physical capabilities, attention span, resistance to disease and adverse environmental conditions, etc. etc. — it is not a far stretch that our limitations extend to even our awareness of our own world and existence. We can only listen so deeply and only look in and out so far — beyond which (and don’t get me wrong, it can be extended), we become no longer human, in a manner of thinking.

So the question is, how far can we extend to approach this roar — and can we ever really find ourselves on the other side?

8:36pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/Z5Xj9y14kcqW
August 28, 2010
On these pages…

…and so it begins.

At the behest of numerous friends and colleagues, and in order to provide an outlet for musings or information that I feel might benefit the reader, I’ve decided to start this blog.  Due to personal preference, I will not use any real names in any of these posts, nor will I use my own real name - though undoubtedly those of you who have access to this blog will know who I am.  Perhaps a bit overambitious, but I’m hoping to provide a header for each post with relevant subcategories. The categories I have developed thus far are: On These Pages (goals of these writings, planned absences from writing), On Relationships (romantic, friendship, advice, with one’s self, one’s past/future, what is the goal of a healthy relationship? Is there any place for caution in love? What is love? friendship?), On Our World (Current Events, Finance, Fun Things to Do), On Text (Poems and Essays of others and of my own composition)… These entries will be clearly composed in one of two styles, the way I write and the way I talk.  This entry is the former.

As for the title of the blog, it is derived from Middlemarch:

[“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”]

“Roaring Silence” I believe is a sufficiently dynamic concept so as to mean many things.  To some, silence is the canvas for discussion, while for others it is a counterpoint to be utilized.  For example, one of the first lessons in international negotiations is that silence during heated negotiations is a highly effective tool causing those who have a cultural proclivity towards filling that silence (read: U.S. and phrases such as “awkward silence”, “pregnant pause”, “deafening silence”) to feel highly uncomfortable and weaken their own bargaining stance against those negotiators from other cultures that are more comfortable in silence either for thought or as an effective negotiation tool (read: Japan).  [For some more on such drastic consequences of communication, one could also explore the cultural acceptability of “staring”.]  Regardless, some perceive of silence as a thing, whereas others may perceive of it as the absence of a thing.

I prefer(red) to take the stance that silence is mutable as either an absence or a presence.  It’s all a matter of perspective: Peace and quiet for one is an opportunity for another to have their tinnitus act up and drive one mad.  Yet, Eliot goes a step further in her quote.  Silence becomes not a presence or absence of noise, but a border, a boundary beyond which the ineffable truth about human life pulsates and grows.  How does one glimpse that world? And even then, with what sense(s)?  Is it possible to have a foot in each world to become more, for lack of a better word, multidimensional?  I think it is, and that is what I hope this blog may be about.  In that fraction of a second when we recognize a new perspective; when we learn something that expands or changes the fundamental dynamics of our thought; when we fall in love; when we feel ourselves whole within our fractured existence; when our reality trembles - those are those moments I feel we get a glimpse of that world beyond silence.  When we truly recognize our gifts, our weaknesses, our personality, our core - we have that brief flash of our self-truth (no more lying to ourselves or letting any other perspectives interfere with our being).  It is that truth that lends us the but the briefest vision to recognize and traverse the silence in order to face the roar beyond it, until the next flash of thought returns us to our reality in our own dimension outside ourselves.  I don’t think, then, that one dies from the beautiful roar beyond the silence, but one must abandon all the interference one has accepted, stripping his or herself to the core in order to become the silence, pass through the silence, and recognize the roar as a heartbeat…and growth.

This blog is about struggling to move beyond our perspective to shake the foundations of our reality so that those things that do not stick, we learn to let go, and those things that do not tremble, we can recognize and cherish as our own.  I am not presumptuous enough to imagine that these words will shake reality, but perhaps they can sow seeds.  And hopefully, the more one comes to recognize what is at one’s core, he or she can be open to so many more perspectives to then be able to at least glimpse that roar beyond the silence, free of any insecurity, confusion or any of the fog into which we all too often voluntarily drift…

4:59pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/Z5Xj9yzDiv6
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