Art Wortd Coop

Winter 2006 – Normal, IL
Last night at Borders I picked up a book by Osho about aloneness and after reading the last four chapters of the book, my perceptive on my current state changed dramatically. Aloneness according to Osho is a gift, not something I should run from. Ever since I started reading the Art of Seduction, I got it in my head that I was going to meet a girl or many girls. The desire for a mate was controlling me. Not until a couple days ago did I realize how much I was suffering. I created the idea that unless I found someone, I could not be happy. Osho says that the ego’s need is never satisfied. After one woman, I will need another because I will never feel as though the other needs me, which is what this whole thing is about. It is not about love and it’s not even about sex. I need to know I am needed. When I feel needed by others, I feel secure. But this is a fantasy. Aloneness is not something to be afraid of and it is not something to want to change. This is the human condition and now it is my opportunity to accept it.
My mind did change after reading Osho. I was no longer having thoughts about women, it was that easy. All I had to tell myself was to give it up, the desire, the fantasy. I was only unhappy when I had the desire. I am not fixated anymore, I feel more relaxed. I’m not on a mission nor is my happiness dependent on an external focus. I do not look outside myself for affirmation of love. I must show and give love to myself – not wanting more than I have right now.
I see how desire and attachment cause suffering. I am not natural and I am not being myself when I am trying to manipulate people. The whole seduction thing was necessary to get to where I am. There is no point to try to alter myself or my life. Osho says practice choiceless awareness and follow the rhythm – I will be aware once I put down the egotistical needs and let the events of my live follow their natural course.

“If you run after things, nothing will come to you. Let things run after you. The sea never sends an invitation to the rivers. That’s why they run to the sea. The sea is content. It doesn’t want anything. That’s the secret in life. Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness”.
-Chuang-Tzu

Early 2007- Normal, IL

10 minutes before work, I’m sitting in the front hall of Heartland College, eating my apple. A man, middle-aged, wearing a sport jacket and a baseball cap with a briefcase, says hello to me in a placid tone. He stands looking out the window and then comes and sits by me. “What a glorious day” he says. Now I’m assessing his character; I peg him as a Mormon. Something about the phrase, “Glorious day”. But I was sitting in this very spot not too long ago, in fact, I was writing a poem about the day from this window. “So where are you on your journey?” the strange man says to me. Now I am convinced he is a religious nut. My voice is hesitant… how do you answer that kind of question to someone you’ve never met before? “My journey?” I say. Well, I’ve gotten clean from drugs and alcohol about three years ago.” He does not congratulate me or applaud. The man’s face is egg-shaped, his skin is freshly shaven, his baseball cap is fit tightly over his egg-shaped head.

“Are you content?” he asks. Now I’m skeptical, just waiting for the Christian segment to come in at any time. “Content”, I say, “Do you mean in a permanent sense?” “Yes, I mean permanent, sustained contentment.” “I don’t believe in permanent happiness. That’s a false happiness if you ask me.” My voice is rigid and defensive. “There’s a difference between contentment and happiness”, he says. “Well, what’s your definition of happiness?” I ask. He takes a moment to pause and then raises his hand in a gesture. “At one end, you have euphoria and happiness, and on the other end misery and suffering.” He holds his right hand directly in front of his nose and he is looking down at his hand as if it were a ruler. “In the center of the spectrum,” he says, speaking slowly, “Contentment.”

I jump in – “No, contentment is just a little toward the more positive end – but just a little. That is where you want to be. But in life, you’ll probably have certain events happen to you – such as the death of a family member or economic setbacks. And you will lose all that contentment. Or you may be thrown into ecstasy or elation. His hand is now directly in front of his nose and he’s staring straight down at it, his voice very slow and hypnotic. But I listen to him because he is talking about emotions. And I am surprised a Christian or Mormon would be so interested in “The spectrum of emotion.” However, I’m still fearful he would bring up some information about his church or about Jesus. So I tell the man with the baseball cap that I have to go to work, which I did. I had to go to work. “Well, it was nice to meet you,” he said, “And good luck on your journey.”

Christopher Al-Aswad’s Journal Entry – March 14, 2003

My mother died on March 13, 2003. She died so peacefully, is what I told my friends. I said she died without resistance. And that’s how I want to live my life, without resistance. Easing up into the ceiling, without resistance. Sliding into the sky, without resistance. Her body; simple a case that imprisoned her soul. Now that soul journeys through the sky. My mother is liberated. She moves and speaks. Mother, you have unlocked a part of my soul and allowed me to see beyond what I could see before. I let go, there’s no point in carrying all that weight. Mother, I’m beginning to think that you’re in every room that I pass through. I can feel that spirit that passed out of your body and dissolved into the bedroom spread through the apartment. I thought of how it would move through the city and out to Indiana by the morning. All along rising as you spread. I’m imagining you here with me now. There’s nothing to perform mother, this is just the beginning of a very long conversation, we’ll speak more often now.

Spirit Mother, Christopher Al-Aswad, 2005

The spirit that dwells in my
mother, trickster and artist
alike, prods and pokes its way
into all of our lives. She likes
to cause problems, to upset
balances, to displace realities.
The conventional is her foe.

Her presence almost makes
you nervous with the sheer
abundance of energy dancing on
her force-field. At any moment,
this abundance of life can rise
to an unheard-of pitch, and
suddenly, mysteriously, break
into a marvelous crescendo
of hysterical and contagious
laughter. Laughing in the
company of my mother is an
experience of ecstasy, complete
unconscious immersion
whirling in the absurdity of life:
crackling, squealing, shrieking
laughter. She feels her emotions
from the center of her being;
total emotion, not inchoate
half-feeling. Complete pain,
complete joy, complete anger.

My mother cries in a movie
theater like no Jewish mother
has ever cried in public before.

She lives at the maximum
threshold and her life is
overflowing. She lives, not apart
from the world, but within the
tumultuous movement and
ever-changing flow of it. She
lives without regrets, without
even the longing of unfulfilled
desires. Anything she wants
to do in this life, she does.

Jan 1, 2007 – Chicago, IL

Last night was a hell trip. But a good one, and I am glad it happened.

On New Years Eve in a bar in Naperville, you should have seen the looks that hung on the faces of both sexes. After twelve o’clock, everyone was thoroughly intoxicated and their eyes like burnt out candles, like empty shop windows and the nervy chaotic crowd aswirl elbows bumping elbows, the showy mirth, the condescending glances fell chopping up everyone. Me and my friends, they were drunk but I was not. We tried to have fun. We played crazy fools but I was self conscious as I always am. The empty vacant stares hurt me though very few really cared what I was doing. I swear I could feel the overall crippled spirit of that bar on New Years Eve. Constraint and shallow cupidity – no one loving, just angry lust feeding everywhere. Could I be guilty too? Of wanting “my share of fun?” Women like sirens with bare attractive thighs and indifferent eyes. Cold objects without souls. I drifted in this bar for an hour or so – the weight of people’s judgments on my mind, the weight of unhappiness or greed. Was this where I had chosen to spend my New Years Eve?

Later, my best friend and I driving home – escaping the hellish spectacle of that place – rejoiced. It was 4:30 am when we were on the highway but never had I such good manly company. Never before had I heard my best friend speak so plainly and so true. We talked about how lucky we were to have each other, to live in such a good place and to have jobs and friends and money – grateful. We arrived at our respectful homes and said a prayer for the coming new year.


.

February 2006 – Normal, IL

A letter to my father on his 60th birthday

It is hard for me to believe that my father is 60 years old. Memories from when you used to take me to my soccer games, or sit with me in front of the computer helping me write my papers, or when we took the road trip to visit colleges – all of these memories have the quality of immediacy. They say that our capacity for memories is infinite, that once you begin digging into your past, there is no end to it. You are embedded in my past lives, through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. There was a golden age for our family and that was perhaps before my 10th birthday. I have fond memories of riding with you and mother in the back of the car. I don’t know exactly where we were driving to – perhaps out to dinner or to a movie. And as we were driving through the Midwest Club, I remember telling jokes to you and mom and making both of you laugh. I don’t know what I said that was so funny but mother would laugh hysterically. Our family was gay, cheerful, and young.

In my childhood and early adolescence, you instilled in me a rare gift which I am grateful for. I imagine that most parents, as they are raising their children, do not analyze the effect such and such a behavior will have on their children. Whatever you taught me at an early age, you taught to me by instinct. What you have given, that I cherish and employ to this day, is a freely-chosen self discipline. Without self-discipline, I doubt whether I could have stayed clean from drugs this long. Without self-discipline, I doubt I could pursue my literary ambitions. Without self-discipline, even staying in shape and quitting smoking would have been impossible. Now I have received many gifts from both you and mother but this is the gift that stands out to me as being directly from you.

The other gift, which is a close second, is a love and appreciation of literature. About a month ago we were reading Shakespeare together – how joyful was I to be in your company reading again. And what a stark contrast from my childhood years when I used to throw tantrums to escape the “reading hour.” But time and patience transform everything. Here I am today thanking you for what I felt you had imposed upon me as a child. The irony implicit in this life – the story speaks for itself.

Though for a good many years mostly when you made me read out loud to you – I imagined you as an overbearing tyrant which of course you were not. But a child sometimes sees his parents through a distorted lens. And as an adolescent, especially during my addition and during the divorce, I imagined you as a personification of evil. I might have made you into a voodoo doll if I had access to one. This of course is an exaggeration but I had a lot of resentment to you and many others during this period. What still baffles me to this day is not only the spiritual strength you must have had stored in you to protect yourself from me, but also the warmth you kept burning in your heart. Never did you grow cold, never did you reject me – but always loved me – and therefore this is the best model of unconditional love I have ever been shown. And it is this model of unconditional love that I emulate toward myself and others.

After the fog of my addiction cleared, after I began to mature into early adulthood and started taking care of my body and my health, you can imagine how my view of you began to change. In a way, I immortalized you – lifted you up from the ranks of man to the tier of godhood. You became a living hero to me and I sought to model my life after you. Indeed, I had transformed my life. I was living from what many would call a second birth and after years of abusing you, I must have wanted to pour a special salve on the relationship that would heal the wounds between us. But just as during my adolescence when I made you a voodoo doll, after my recovery, I was making you into my Buddha, my idol and I was near worshiping you. But neither of these images of you matched your true relation to me.

So today, on your 60th birthday, I ask the questions – What is your true relation to me? If you are not the man I blame or the man I praise, then who are you to me? And without being too philosophical, too entangled in speculation, I feel I can make the judgment that only now am I coming to see you as you are, and to love you for the man you are. For the first time, I am not inflating or deflating you – but really starting to get to know you. When I came over a couple weekends ago and we hung up pictures and organized your books, I saw a glimpse of who that man is who I call my father. No adjective will describe him. Not because he has no qualities – but because he is of a spirit that transcends qualities. He is an individual but not an ego. He reminds me of myself but overflows beyond myself.

Dad, I love you. A gratitude is present in me right now as I pen these final words. The mystery is so inconceivable – so infinite – it surrounds me like a dream. All I am thinking – this life is too short, too short, too short…

July 30, 2006 – Normal, IL

I have a backyard
my neighbors have a garden
the air reverberates with
children’s voices.
Crickets chirping
the autumn stands one month ahead
looking back at the most placid day
in August – her feathered frock
gently ruffles.
My forehead is bathed in sunlight
my eyes are handsomely covered.
I sit on my patio like a spectator
wearing a disguise.
The twittering of the birds overlays
the chorus of children’s voices
from far and near.
Chortles and sing song laughter.
You must see the birds flying
over the rooftops
they glide and glide.
All the winged creatures slipping
through the transparent air.
My grass smiles to butterflies
central Illinois - one giant plain
summer’s last hurray – the heat
trickles down in beads of sweat
and the clipping, and twittering, cheeping
the fresh and innocent vision
Miranda calls it a “brave new world.”
There’s the butterfly
hear her flapping around
right over your head,
Splendid wings, gold shimmering
things like a flashing jewel
We practice our reunion
in our backyards-
we paint through our anxieties.
This is a new landscape. A new setting -
the frightfulness will disappear
the nervousness will go away
fill the cup and you will take care of your
thirst.
All the gifts were given to him
All at once from his dead mother -
mother, I am grateful
mother I am great.
the zigzag path of the butterfly
brings me out of my shade
says to me hello.
In the beginning, there were words I had
trouble saying.
In the beginning, there were words I had
trouble phrasing.
I am new here
new to a backyard.

March 2005 – Normal, IL

“…Greatness is not assumed, it is earned and I have not earned it yet. These are just my thoughts, they are not public displays of art. Why to write art you need a form, like a poem or a short story, or a novel. Those are the buildings. But a journal, a journal is not timeless, it is transitory, fleeting like butterfly wings. One flap, and they’re gone. We so want to assert our spirits upon this earth. My mother, why hers casts a light across the family, her artwork, a colorful mural once foregrounded, now subtle, behind us. Where will her son come out? There needs to be industry. What will I produce, just these 25 year old thoughts? Language must be handled deftly, it must be learned from masters. This is not a vacation here on earth. We are expected to leave legacies for our children and if our children were never born, those who we love instead, but build we must. We must express the unexpressed, the eternal must seep through the words. And silence must fill our ears with images so resolute that we shy aware from their gaze. Our discussion is only with ourselves, we are forever talking back into our womb until our mother hears us calling back into her. We must warn our families, tell them to stop before they begin. These creatures have spirits. these animals have real hearts. We’re alive and song pours out of us. We’re so much of life we cannot hide from our own enormousness, impossible faith, beyond beyond…”

February 2007 – Normal, IL

“…My mind is a temple of illusion and I am a false god. True, there is something pure and positive in me but it is hidden so deep, under all the layers of illusion. I seem to know my soul exists but I am constantly running from that source. Instead, I obsess over personal problems and my mind resorts to fantasy – to lusts or material desires. The Buddhists are right about one thing – that we can’t trust the mind. The mind is not to be trusted. And yet I listen to the thoughts that run through my head and quickly, I get caught up in my old ways – nervousness, busyness, impatience – never resting in the moment, always rustling. I try to practice awareness but my awareness is not genuine because simultaneously I am giving in to the pleasures of the ego of lusting, of wanting, of fantasizing. I can not be aware without gravitation toward illusion and then my mind becomes more charged with anxiety because now I am self conscious.
The ego has a plan for me everyday. Will I follow it? I usually do – that plan leaves me with little satisfaction and more desire. My desires have many faces but the general urge is to have something else to change how I feel by possessing something.
What is wrong with how I feel? I feel like time is running out. I feel the need to perform. I feel the pressure to maintain an illusion.
My life is mostly an illusion with a grain of the truth. The paradox is that my illusions teach me to become wise. We cannot be led directly to the source, the source is too powerful. We must go by indirection – mistake after mistake we learn to take another route. Once I thought I knew what I wanted. Now I see that I want everything and none of it will help me change the way I feel.
I feel the burden of living. The flux, the rise and fall of hopes, the patience involved. Where am I moving toward? Not more illusion but less – I am moving toward the light. These illusions will not save me more. I am not who I thought I was - my talents, my security, my good sense is not what I thought it was. I must tell myself Chris, you are not so wise. Your life is little more than a petty day dream. Wake up. These illusions you drown yourself in – do not trust them – do not trust your mind.”

I'm coming off a technology binge and trying to reconnect with what was once important to me.

The Internet is a black hole. I lost myself to the Internet one year ago and now I'm recovering, trying to retrieve myself from the bits and pieces of cyberspace. As if during one of my trances, I was ground into two-dimensional data and now I'm floating around helplessly, looking everywhere but seeing nothing.

None of this makes any sense to me. How I can sit for hours in front of a computer and stare. But that is what controls me. I'm writing this essay to understand how technology isolates me from my sensory experience and why I get so addicted to this feeling of (dis)connectedness.

I used to think that technology was different from other pursuits. One year ago I began blogging. I experimented with creating web pages and exploring the vast corners of the Net. I introduced myself to virtual communities and regularly commented on people's blogs. There was something I was after. I suppose I naively believed in this new interface called Web 2.0 and thought it would bring me, if not happiness, then a feeling of connection.

That is not to say I haven't made any friendships since I began blogging. I have. And I continue to enjoy reading people's blogs and commenting on them. But as a writer, I want more. This is my makeup, you see. The Internet lured me deeper and deeper into a virtual world, where I became obsessed with creating profiles, new accounts, new services, new buttons, new widgets, and the elusive target of my satisfaction kept inching away.

Rather than describe how I've been lost in cyberspace for these last twelve months, I'd like to talk about what was once important to me.

Both the Internet and my favorite pastime, reading, seemed to offer me the same thing: immersion. I love the deep immersion of a text. It doesn't even have to be a novel. I used to retreat into the library and spend whole days in solitude.

But the immersion of the text and the immersion of the screen differ in significant ways. Lost in the library, lost in a book, involves active participation. You can become immersed in a television show, but it does not provide the same experience. Why not?

I believe it has something to do with the senses. Television only stimulates two senses (visual and auditory). The Internet stimulates perhaps three or four (visual, auditory, tactile, imagination). Reading simulates perhaps four or five (visual, auditory, tactile, imagination, memory).

The library has become a sort of symbol in my life. I've spent vast amounts of time in libraries. Throughout the years, there always seemed to be a library I could retreat to for safety and peace of mind. I developed relationships to these libraries by visiting them on a regular basis.

While the physical space of the library is there before I arrive, the mental space is my own creation. The mental space is part of the book I'm reading and my own imagination. The physical space of the library is silent and empty. I enjoy the transference that takes place while I'm reading in the library. Of course the experience of reading can happen anywhere; one can become transported from any location. However, because of the silence that allows for meditation, the library seems to open up my imagination tenfold.

The Internet is also a virtual world, albeit a noisy and cluttered one. Oftentimes after working many hours on my web pages I stand back from my work to appreciate it. Yes, I've accomplished something today. But where is it? And what is it? So I've changed my widgets around. Or I've customized the appearance of my blog. Perhaps I've even added a podcast. Nevertheless my work feels lacking in substance and never fully complete. A web page exists but you cannot touch it like you can a book or a painting. There is the sense that everything held up in this virtual world we call the Internet is likely to disappear at any moment. At the whims of a Google ranking and a body of readers in constant flux, who knows if you exist or not?

But when I'm in the library reading, I'm sure I exist. I'm so sure I never even have to think about whether I exist or not. The Net is constantly reminding me of myself. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, nearly every media is geared toward me and how I want to present myself. The inevitable consequence is that I become sick of myself and yearn for another activity to help me forget (me).



I miss the childlike experience of reading in a library. When the physical space disappears and I am fully immersed in a novel, so immersed that my imagination feels like it is receiving a direct communication from the author's mind. The pictures and words are coming in so clearly that I am momentarily awakened, that is, conscious, inside another world.

For a while I was looking for a foothold in cyberspace; a place to stand; but the Internet is like quicksilver. The more work I put into my web pages, the less stable my tiny ledge seems to feel. Now I'm seeking more solid experiences outside of the screen. Until I reached a burnout, or many burnouts, I never truly appreciated reading, and having an empty library, an empty mind.

I love reading but it is hard for me to get addicted to it. Why? Because it is not such an easy pleasure to obtain. The pleasure takes time and patience and the reward comes but not too soon.

In the library barriers come down, the barrier between my mind and the mind of the author, the barrier between truth and fiction, actuality and dreams.

The Internet also dissolves barriers. Geographical distances are breached, multitudes of cultures are brought together, different age groups and income levels coincide. But the time and space of the Internet is compressed; everything moves faster than in daily life. While it takes two days for a postman to deliver your mail, Yahoo does it in less than two minutes.

Rather than contracting, time expands when I'm sitting in the library. As I enter the fictional world of a novel, time becomes infinite and extends in all directions, across history. My imagination also expands as if in tandem with the words I'm reading. I'm not the same person; I'm not the same mind.

On the Internet I skate on the surface of information, web pages, headlines, profiles. But in the library I probe mental worlds, unravel abstractions, witness people from different centuries interacting, and feel their emotions.

So I've returned to the library to write my novel. I've returned to the library to read. I've returned to the library to philosophize on these and other topics. To ask questions. I'm looking for a wider world than the World Wide Web.

Stumble It!

I like to think of myself as someone who is drafting and re-drafting his life until it makes sense. Life, being irrational, never fully makes sense and so I am continually making up new stories about myself in a creative and naive way.

But this is how children think. Nothing is absolute. Everything is provisional for a child. Tell the child one story, she will believe it, because any story to a child has the possibility of being true.

Adults on the other hand conform to a rigid set of beliefs, true or untrue only according to their own reality.

I write because it is a door I once opened and I continue to go back and forth through that door. I explore the byways and the tunnels of myself.

Whatever I write always has the possibility of being true--at least to me--and to write down my reality is satisfying.

The question of whether what I do is art or not. Sometimes I am intentionally creating art and sometimes I am just writing. The best writing comes out when I am not intentionally doing anything--in fact the best writing comes out when I don't know what I'm doing or saying. But I think I like to write because it feels like someone is listening. It feels like what I am saying is not only true to me but true to others as well.

In a way, I am a compulsive writer. I will write because it's a drive.

Maybe I should stop.

Sometimes I do. But when I stop writing, I read a lot and reading activates my imagination and soon I am writing again.

Whatever I've been saying in the last few paragraphs, I'm not aiming at anything. I'm circling around the mood and the moment of my experience, gladly touching the borders and playing with the edges.

Everyone has their own secret life. We all have minds which are islands--between those islands flow the rivers of our hearts, but the mind itself is lonely. Which is strange, because we retreat into our minds so often. We retreat into our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs, and we find solace in them even though they are ridiculous.

But there is safety in one's private mind, the thoughts of which no one can read. Because they are private entertainments of the self.

If you have pets, then you know the comforts of having non-human company. The human-animal connection is unique, and for obvious reasons, animals are incredibly loved by humans.

Ultimately, I think what we are stuck with is habit. Whatever habits you cultivate within your lifetime, those are the heavens and hells of your existence. Many habits fall between these two extremes and that's why our lives are pretty mundane.

Most of our habits are mundane in the everyday sense. We go to work, we eat meals, we tend to our homes and our families, we do chores. Perhaps that's why novelty is so interesting and stimulating.

I seek novelty. If I am not seeking novelty in dramatic and bizarre ways, I am seeking novelty in the miniature sense.

I do appreciate a well-ordered life, everything manageable and in its right place. This stems from the pure gratification of a sense of control. But as far as I can tell, control is something that most people try to exert over themselves and their environments.

My habits are deeply fulfilling mundane rituals that I carry out, such as going to Borders every morning to have my coffee and read the New York Times. To me, the Times is my mainstay to a normal, functioning adulthood. I am not saying the specific paper has the same magical effect on everyone. But for me reading the paper is very soothing and it reaffirms my sense of self.

I admire the quality of the writing in the Times and I believe it improves my own writing. But there is something else about the ritual which stabilizes me.

And yet, I seek novelty.

Women provide men with an immediate burst of novelty and distraction. If you are ever bored, start a romantic relationship and you will find how interesting your life gets.

But I believe that I ultimately retreat back into my own private mind, and that shared space between me and another person gradually lessens or dries up and dies.

I believe in long-term relationships, I am cynical towards permanent ones.

Right now I don't know where I am in terms of the opposite sex. Do I want to get married? Do I want to have children? Would I prefer to stay single?

The opposite sex is delightful. Loving can also be a doorway to a higher potential for one's being, but in most cases, we are not mature in love for long enough. We stop loving and I cannot explain or understand that.

Love gets degraded over time, diminished, and terribly distorted until it is not even love but something representing its opposite: hate.

Now my cats are quiet. The heater has stopped humming and the only sound in the room is of my keys clicking.

I think about my past life, my life in Spain and Las Vegas. I think of the adventures I once had and now being here in this moment of early, untainted adulthood.

I'm making the right choices now. Thank God. I am rational about things. I am aware of habit and how it has the power to lull me into a state of unconsciousness.

We grow ourselves. We grow our personalities and our behaviors. Like a garden, we grow ourselves--and once we were sick gardens but now we are growing healthier. Once we were patches of weeds over a dusty mound of dirt, but now we are seeking wholeness and fruit.

We want to bear fruit. For ourselves, for others.

We learn in time to survive, and even better, we learn to thrive.

It is the unfortunate fact of being human that we are constantly working against ourselves. We like to be our own enemies. And I think it is better that we just accept this as a matter of fact, that we accept the demons inside of us which want to destroy us, even if that destruction is a slow-going poison.

Because, ultimately, we must die and we know we must die. So the destructive force inside each one of us is familiar and close. We know the destructive side as much as we know the creative side. We know when we do good to ourselves and our bodies, and we know when we do bad.

Good and bad are only relative to our own individual experiences. Doing wrong to others is doing wrong to oneself.

But it is almost impossible to escape the cloud of unconsciousness that hovers over each one of us. And in an ironic display, we can see everyone else's flaws but not our own.

It is like the inability to smell one's own scent. The smell is palpable to others, but not to yourself.

I don't repress the mystery about myself; I form it.

I also celebrate it.

I have been called naive before, and after all, this blog is called The Blog of Innocence.

We are all innocent in life. We are innocent to the radical mystery of it.

No matter what we do, what errors we make, what horrors befall us, we are all human, we are all innocent.

Read a recent essay, "Loving Her" . . .

Let me describe what I see in front of me:

the Sunday edition of the NYTimes, Tricycle (a Buddhist magazine), a book of poetry by Emily Dickinson, The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang, The Energy of Delusion by Viktor Shklovsky;

and underneath the coffee table, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, and Tom Jones by Henry Fielding.

I am reading all of these books at the same (or sections of them)--in addition to the newspaper and magazine.

Lin Yutang talks about the "histrionic instinct". I have quoted extensively from his book in the previous post. He talks about our human drive to perform for others. He talks about how we are hardwired for the approval of an audience. Let me quote him once again:

"Consciously or unconsciously, we are all actors in this life playing to the audience in a part and style approved by them."

Right now I am blogging. There has been a recent explosion in blogging. The Internet is a suspended audience. You know people are watching; you just don't know how many or who these people are. The audience becomes more elusive. But it is only the promise of someone watching that we need. A virtual audience will do just fine.

In Las Vegas, eight years ago, I had an experience.

I became an actor in my own life. Was I imagining things? I deeply believed that my actions were central to the world. I adopted a persona based on these beliefs.

In adolescent psychology, this is called "imaginary audience." Another characteristic of adolescent egocentricism is the "personal fable". Professor Boughner of Rodgers State University writes: "adolescents imagine their own lives as mythical or heroic" and "they see themselves destined for fame or fortune".

These ideas seem closely related to what Lin Yutang calls the "histrionic instinct".

Eight years after my experience in Las Vegas, I set out to write my history. You can call this history my "personal fable".

The novel is called Lethe Bashar's Novel of Life.

Lethe Bashar is me eight years before, in Las Vegas. What defines Lethe's character is the "histrionic instinct".

My adolescence was a dream. I was under the spell of my own play-acting. I created a persona to feel important, to feel unique. (Could I be doing the same thing now? Writing the novel?)

I am writing the novel to understand the character and the dream. And to know the spell has truly ended.

Can the actor awaken from her performance at the end of the day?

The theater lights have turned off, the audience has gone home. The actor is still up on stage.

At a certain point, the role the actor plays can become self-destructive. The imagination fuels her sense of power as well as her sense of defeat. According to adolescent psychology, the actor thinks that she is invincible. Imagination becomes dangerous, a weapon. There are consequences for incessant dreaming. Sometimes this is called "idealism".

I compare my alter ego, Lethe Bashar, to Don Quixote. Lethe Bashar takes drugs and acts out an imaginary role as poet/writer. Don Quixote reads too many books and acts out an imaginary role as knight errant. Both go on journeys. They leave their homes.

The novel by Cervantes is a violent novel. It is funny, but it is also violent. Nabokov writes, "Both parts of Don Quixote form a veritable encyclopedia of cruelty. From that viewpoint it is one of the most bitter and barbarous books ever penned. And its cruelty is artistic."

What I have described to you is adolescent psychology. But couldn't we say this is adult psychology as well?

Lin Yutang writes, "The only objection is that the actor may replace the man and take entire possession of him."

The actor degenerates into a fool, a nutcase, like Don Quixote. We have seen many of these characters on reality television, on American Idol.

The audience laughs instead of cries. And yet somewhere inside we can relate to this foolishness. We empathize with Don Quixote.

There are many books at my house. Gazing at my library solidifies my sense of self. I surround myself with books, extensions of myself.

If I am an actor, books are my props. At the beginning of this essay I described to you "the set".

You are my audience right now. Your applause strengthens my purpose.

I cannot see the writer or the artist. I can only ruthlessly act out his needs and desires. The role is my destiny and my pre-destiny.

Destiny gets created somewhere.

Lin Yutang says that beyond the fear of God and the fear of death is the fear of one's neighbors.

In other words, society.

The audience is society. A child's first society is her mother and father.

I first started reading classical literature to my father when I was in middle school.

I hated it.

But he would make me go downstairs and sit with him on the couch. We would read for one hour. He had a collection of leather bound books that arrived in the mail each month.

The books literally cracked open they were so new. Each new edition had a frontispiece portrait of the author. The manila pages had illustrations. Under a block of letters that read, "PUBLISHED EXPRESSLY FOR THE PERSONAL LIBRARY OF," my father signed his name.

I couldn't understand what I was reading and that's why I despised reading with my father. It felt like a cruel joke.

For five years I read with my father almost every night.

Lin Yutang says the actor is seeking approval of the audience. The audience is society.

I really believe in my role as a writer. I don't know who I would "act out" instead. It's not easy to pick up another role.

We become who we are through sedimentation. Years of repetition. We work with the old drafts constantly, rewriting the ego. The future seems to hang on the success or failure of a single part.

I omitted the first line of this essay. I was making revisions. I will include that line here:

"I'm making discoveries about myself that are unsettling."

The unsettling part of a dream is not the dream itself, but discovering the dream is unreal.

Can I escape my role as a writer? Do I even want to?


CRA 5-28-08