For decades, I’ve lived with or felt nearest to persons who are emotionally open, trusting, caring, and therefore candid. I’d welcome being told by a friend that I seemed, say, “emotionally disabled,” because—well firstly, that would be funny to hear; but mainly that would be a chance to understand myself better through their sensibility, a chance to learn something about myself, as well as better understand her or him.
Yet, knowing myself quite well (I’m not emotionally disabled—but what fun it is to think I’m crazy—like a Woody Allen?)—knowing myself quite well, I’d enjoy helping my friend understand me better while understanding my friend better.
Many persons aren’t like this, which is OK. But I’m usually wanting openness, come what may—which must always be for the better, right? (To whom it can concern: Remember those days when “tripping” together was a sacred Event?)
I’m comfortable with myself—and with all the aspects that a life may be made of, I believe. I’m like a physician who lives with the reality of things—or idealizes that we get to there. (I’m not an MD.) I’ve lived for decades in a world of “physicians” of self and “mind”: psychotherapists, literary kindreds, philosophers—not as an elitism—please—nor as a matter of being oriented by troubles that would seem to be resolved by sublimation (a motif of poetics) or conceptual height. Cherishing Openness may be anewing because It’s a font of creativity and discovery. I want to exemplify what I welcome, implicitly being a promoter of flourishing (which I tirelessly iterate for philosophical concerns I’ll later pursue relative to others’ work). The expressiveness in that makes me, I guess, a dramatist of sorts, philosophically invested in openings. (But I also have a dramaturgical sense of action I’ve begun to conceptualize in recent months.)
I’m thankful to have been drawn as much as I have by avid minds (mostly through text), trying out ideas like sketch artists may try to capture a moment, seeking the better representation of being drawn; or seeking to go with feeling for the sake of its apparent validity—but with no need to turn away from reality, because reality is another chance to be drawn and furthered.
That may seem precious or self possessed, but it’s not. Being in love with the play is not about esteeming myself or gaining admiration. It’s about love of the play. Learning never ends for those who live long (given a lack of terminal disease and healthy humoring). I’m aiming for 100.
Whatever you want to say, whatever we might talk about, I’m open. Though I never volunteer confessions about what suffering I’ve survived, it’s a hardwon part of my easily seeming to have suffered little. I’m happy (more or less), honestly (not stuck in pretensions that are self-soothing deceptions—I hope). However blind I may remain about the truth of things, I hope that I’m always open to understanding how a time or a life may go better to actualize aspirations or heartfelt desire—or not, and then I so want to be there with you, whomever, to make it all go better, inasmuch as I’m able.
Largely online so far, I’ve turned confessional desire into conceptual venturing (as if theorizing confession?). I now live far beyond simply needing confession. (I’ve done journaling since my early 20s—all packed away somewhere!, now digital and archived safely.)
Theorizing is a healthy aspect of enduring curiosity. So, for example, sometimes I’m implicitly asking: What’s going on at boundaries (liminalities!) between authentic autobiography and authentically ventured fiction? What’s the difference between authentic confession and authentic venturing?
I referred to myself recently as a “philosophical character,” relishing the pretense that “I” is a fiction, because it’s fun to live in a resonance of narrative hiding and display. Living with a liminality of the difference is fun.
But I’m generally not wanting to hide. It’s theorizing shyness, maybe (or implicitly confessing humility, I want to believe). It’s living an irony validly, I hope: largely not hiding here, in the online, vastly accessible clearing, so contrary to chances of daily light and ordinary days; yet, not letting myself get presumptuous about difficulties of staying open to mySelf, just as I would hope to do in being really with you, whomever. With you, I’m so with my vulnerability (which can turn me into a caricature of myself, defending against being unable to show I’m not disabled). So—ha!—here I’m protected by the textuality between us. My mastery of textuality is impeccable ensurance against terminal unease.
That I so loved you would never be put in quote marks—unless I’m feeling self deprecative (a nice word)—which only happens because I’m honest (I hope) about questioning what I easily say, after surprising myself that it happened so easily.
There are echoes of wanting pure confession which have been restrained—though not enough (I learned), too easily being intrusive to read—failing to recognize that I’m uninvited?—failing to remember that mutuality is integral to giving validity to our time that would be so cathartically borne by presumptions. Mutuality grounds a welcomed hearing.
And so it came to pass that there would be literature made of this thing called writing, not just accounting and recording oral stories too involuted to remember across time: A weathered voice reconciles herself, him, its Self to some unmet future hearing through traces, letters.
OK, I’m in love with myself.
No, I “fail” to hold back because I’m not egoistic about it all. I’m trusting. I just hoped too much—my fault—my fault, which can be retraced like a fiction, as if I’m a character of myself in being validly guileless, finding nothing to admire in restraint for its own sake.
Writing openly—be it poetic or even conceptual, as well as purely confessional—is about valuing trust and care and living curiosity. Living an ethically shameless opening should never be made to feel regrettable—except when it turns you away permanently. (But who are you who would let yourself be turned away by love of openness?)
Even a maudlin Eros of transgression can be authentically luscious, such-as-I-am, if that’s truly where I am, as if living a nude question: Why am I here?
And there you are, still with me here, silently showing there’s more engaging me than living fiction.
So, you get intergenric, transgenric, whatever writing because that’s what I love to explore and share, as much as I can.
You didn’t ask to be really with me; you were just playing along.
Well, I was really there, still now here with you when I write—not with pretense (not to frame My Being With you, as if I should be praised for candor here-and-there in my site). I’m just here.
I knew you when you were very happy. I recall vividly how you love to be. I adored it all. It’s your living gift to your daughter: She will have you, taking for granted her good fortune, as if it’s just the way the world should be: that she is causing you to love her so, just by being herself openly.
You’ll be a darling, dedicated, good enough mother.
But I feel you don’t yet agree.
Nonsense! Love yourself. Look at me. (Don’t turn away.) I believe in you. I do, I do, and I will always.
Many persons aren’t like this, which is OK. But I’m usually wanting openness, come what may—which must always be for the better, right? (To whom it can concern: Remember those days when “tripping” together was a sacred Event?)
I’m comfortable with myself—and with all the aspects that a life may be made of, I believe. I’m like a physician who lives with the reality of things—or idealizes that we get to there. (I’m not an MD.) I’ve lived for decades in a world of “physicians” of self and “mind”: psychotherapists, literary kindreds, philosophers—not as an elitism—please—nor as a matter of being oriented by troubles that would seem to be resolved by sublimation (a motif of poetics) or conceptual height. Cherishing Openness may be anewing because It’s a font of creativity and discovery. I want to exemplify what I welcome, implicitly being a promoter of flourishing (which I tirelessly iterate for philosophical concerns I’ll later pursue relative to others’ work). The expressiveness in that makes me, I guess, a dramatist of sorts, philosophically invested in openings. (But I also have a dramaturgical sense of action I’ve begun to conceptualize in recent months.)
I’m thankful to have been drawn as much as I have by avid minds (mostly through text), trying out ideas like sketch artists may try to capture a moment, seeking the better representation of being drawn; or seeking to go with feeling for the sake of its apparent validity—but with no need to turn away from reality, because reality is another chance to be drawn and furthered.
That may seem precious or self possessed, but it’s not. Being in love with the play is not about esteeming myself or gaining admiration. It’s about love of the play. Learning never ends for those who live long (given a lack of terminal disease and healthy humoring). I’m aiming for 100.
Whatever you want to say, whatever we might talk about, I’m open. Though I never volunteer confessions about what suffering I’ve survived, it’s a hardwon part of my easily seeming to have suffered little. I’m happy (more or less), honestly (not stuck in pretensions that are self-soothing deceptions—I hope). However blind I may remain about the truth of things, I hope that I’m always open to understanding how a time or a life may go better to actualize aspirations or heartfelt desire—or not, and then I so want to be there with you, whomever, to make it all go better, inasmuch as I’m able.
Largely online so far, I’ve turned confessional desire into conceptual venturing (as if theorizing confession?). I now live far beyond simply needing confession. (I’ve done journaling since my early 20s—all packed away somewhere!, now digital and archived safely.)
Theorizing is a healthy aspect of enduring curiosity. So, for example, sometimes I’m implicitly asking: What’s going on at boundaries (liminalities!) between authentic autobiography and authentically ventured fiction? What’s the difference between authentic confession and authentic venturing?
I referred to myself recently as a “philosophical character,” relishing the pretense that “I” is a fiction, because it’s fun to live in a resonance of narrative hiding and display. Living with a liminality of the difference is fun.
But I’m generally not wanting to hide. It’s theorizing shyness, maybe (or implicitly confessing humility, I want to believe). It’s living an irony validly, I hope: largely not hiding here, in the online, vastly accessible clearing, so contrary to chances of daily light and ordinary days; yet, not letting myself get presumptuous about difficulties of staying open to mySelf, just as I would hope to do in being really with you, whomever. With you, I’m so with my vulnerability (which can turn me into a caricature of myself, defending against being unable to show I’m not disabled). So—ha!—here I’m protected by the textuality between us. My mastery of textuality is impeccable ensurance against terminal unease.
That I so loved you would never be put in quote marks—unless I’m feeling self deprecative (a nice word)—which only happens because I’m honest (I hope) about questioning what I easily say, after surprising myself that it happened so easily.
There are echoes of wanting pure confession which have been restrained—though not enough (I learned), too easily being intrusive to read—failing to recognize that I’m uninvited?—failing to remember that mutuality is integral to giving validity to our time that would be so cathartically borne by presumptions. Mutuality grounds a welcomed hearing.
And so it came to pass that there would be literature made of this thing called writing, not just accounting and recording oral stories too involuted to remember across time: A weathered voice reconciles herself, him, its Self to some unmet future hearing through traces, letters.
OK, I’m in love with myself.
No, I “fail” to hold back because I’m not egoistic about it all. I’m trusting. I just hoped too much—my fault—my fault, which can be retraced like a fiction, as if I’m a character of myself in being validly guileless, finding nothing to admire in restraint for its own sake.
Writing openly—be it poetic or even conceptual, as well as purely confessional—is about valuing trust and care and living curiosity. Living an ethically shameless opening should never be made to feel regrettable—except when it turns you away permanently. (But who are you who would let yourself be turned away by love of openness?)
Even a maudlin Eros of transgression can be authentically luscious, such-as-I-am, if that’s truly where I am, as if living a nude question: Why am I here?
And there you are, still with me here, silently showing there’s more engaging me than living fiction.
So, you get intergenric, transgenric, whatever writing because that’s what I love to explore and share, as much as I can.
You didn’t ask to be really with me; you were just playing along.
Well, I was really there, still now here with you when I write—not with pretense (not to frame My Being With you, as if I should be praised for candor here-and-there in my site). I’m just here.
I knew you when you were very happy. I recall vividly how you love to be. I adored it all. It’s your living gift to your daughter: She will have you, taking for granted her good fortune, as if it’s just the way the world should be: that she is causing you to love her so, just by being herself openly.
You’ll be a darling, dedicated, good enough mother.
But I feel you don’t yet agree.
Nonsense! Love yourself. Look at me. (Don’t turn away.) I believe in you. I do, I do, and I will always.
