autumn twilight
… where the water meets the sea, between the worlds, within the void …autumn twilight
… where the water meets the sea, between the worlds, within the void …I’m a faggot
This is not really about claiming a word, although that is perhaps a positive side effect. It’s about posessing myself and not being shamed. A lot of the lgbt community is incredibly insulted by the word faggot. In some ways, I understand why. This word has been used as a weapon against us for a long while. It has a host of negative connotations.
In a bigger way though, I don’t get why people make a fuss about it. If someone calls me a faggot, they’re saying I sleep with men, which I do. I’m not ashamed of that and I have no feeling of insult.
One might argue that a person who calls me a fag is also calling me weak, effemenite, swishy, or a host of other things. If a person calls me a fag they’re trying to invoke all the negative or insulting attributes of stereotypical gay men. I own my advantages and disadvantages, my failings and successes, and I choose which ones are positive traits and negative traits.
Words have power, whether or not we give it to them. The word faggot is chock full of power. But it’s my power. It’s a word that intersects with my sub-culture and gathers a tremendous amount of force, and that force does not belong to the people who use it as a weapon. It belongs to us as queer men and women. It cuts us because we invest it with the force to do so. I refuse to damage myself like that.
Often, when I refer to myself as a faggot people around me are surprised. Sometimes they are put off. Sometimes they are insulted for me. Sometimes they themselves are insulted. Every time it is an opportunity to teach people that I am not afraid or ashamed of the descriptions people give me. They are either true or not. If they are true, and I am ashamed, that means I have an issue I need to work on. If they are false, I have no reason to be hurt or ashamed by them.
This is part of a larger pattern of thought that I’ve been moving through lately. It’s a response to what I perceive to be a huge problem. I’ve had a few arguments with people lately about placing the blame on the wrong thing. The word faggot is not a problem. The problem is people who hate us.
We seem to make a habit of addressing our concerns by attacking the explicit instead of the implicit. They are certainly connected, but problems are usually rooted in the implicit. They’re rooted in an understanding, a philosophy, belief, or pattern. Changing explicit behavior does not always alter the implicit reality.
Correllation does not imply causation. Telling people not to use the word faggot does not stop people from discriminating against me or hating me. In truth, I suspect it makes them more likely to do so, and to do so in secret. On the other hand, recognizing that I am a faggot, makes a powerful statement that trying to supress the word does not.
It says that I own myself and my expression. It says that you can not shame me. It says that you do not have the authority to place moral judgment upon me. It says that I am not afraid.
Solstice-Tide, Shakespeare, and Stagnation
It’s 9:00. I’m still on the train to work. Actually I just got on the train. I’m running fabulously late today, which normally doesn’t bother me, but I’ve been later and later of late. I’m having a real problem getting out of bed at a reasonable hour. I am not sure if I need to go to bed earlier, or if there is some other issue bothering me here.
I haven’t written pretty much at all for about a week. As a result, I feel really constipated. I’ve got all this stuff going on, and I haven’t really taken any opportunity to let it out. Sometimes writing can seem like a creative enema, or the spiritual equivalent of ex-lax.
I’m listening to the soundtrack to “Were the World Mine,” my current addiction. The title song has lyrics that are based on Shakespeare.
I see their knavery. This is to make an ass of me. To fright me, if they could.
Yet I will not stir, from this place do what they can. I will work, up and down here. And I will sing, that they shall hear. That I am not, I am not afraid. I am not afraid.
I know not by what power I’m made bold. But still you floud my insufficiency. The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace.
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye. My tongue should catch your tongue sweet melody. My tongue your tongue, were the world mine.
And I will sing, that they shall hear. That I am not, I am not afraid. I am not afraid.
Faeries away, fetch me that flower. UP and down, up and down. I will lead them up and down. Faeries away, swift as a shadow. Up and down, up and down. I will lead them up and down…
It goes on. This song has kept me alive for the past 5 days or so. Everytime I listen to it I feel strong. I feel full of grace. I suspect it helps that it’s Shakespeare, and helps more that the music is brilliant and powerful. And that it’s sun by a faerie.
Last weekend was the Summer Solstice weekend. Friday I went out during the rain, and walked the labryinth at St. Scholastica. I left feeling empowered, with a lesson or a reminder, about gifts and how they are meant to be used. When we are given a gift by the Divine, or by a Spirit, it is meant to be exercised, to be used. One should not hoard or squander the gifts of the Divine. Grace is meant to be lived in, not kept selfishly close to ourselves.
This resonates with something one of my teachers and I talked about over winter. Power, Energy, Magic, can not be hoarded. It is a living force (to be somewhat Jedi about it). A practitioner is the vessel and conduit of that force, but he is not meant to hold it. He is meant to channel it, to be changed by it. When you keep power in a tight fist, and try not to use it, it becomes stagnant. It creates blocks and unrest, and it can become a real problem to your health and wellbeing.
This is something that I’ve been guilty of in the past, and that I still struggle with. Not because I have a desire to hold onto power (although I like feeling powerful), but because I often don’t think about it. I don’t know how other people perceive this, but I think we are attached to the current. The current is there no matter what. If you don’t use it, you get full and are subject to the attendant issues of pressure and stagnation of that force.
For people who have a wide channel, or a large pipe if you will, either because we have some natural inclination or because we’ve trained ourselves and exercised that channel, this is a big problem, because we get full quickly. It’s easy for me to get lost in myself and forget to use the energy that’s flowing into me. Karate has been a big help in that, since physical exertion provides a great outlet for that energy. But I still have more work to do. Some weeks are great, others are much more challenging.
On Saturday night I couldn’t sleep, so I walked down to the beach to wait for the Solstice Sunrise. I made a seven circuit labryinth in the sand and walked it to center myself. Then I sat on my blanket and tried to write. I wrote a few pages, but it was junk. Serious junk. There was no passion or power in it at all. It was as though I was writing because I should write, not because I had something to say.
This is of course, not the first time that’s happened, but it was somehow very noticable. Being midsummers eve, I can’t imagine why things like that would seem important and attention getting. So I put down my pen and just sat on my blanket and watched the sky grow lighter. I cried a little bit. I induldged myself in a little bit of self-pity. I twittered with @eve11 and watched the clouds turn pink and the sky brighten. Then I walked home, and saw more rabbits than I’ve ever seen in my life. One after another, hopping ahead of me, across my path, and towards home.
I’ve been seeing bunnies in a lot of places the last six months. They seem to be getting more prolific though, I have been meaning to dump some time into working with rabbit, but it hasn’t happened yet. I think that needs to get bumped up in the priority list a little, because it’s getting kind of out of hand. As if the bunnies weren’t interesting enough, a young coyote showed up, trotting happy as you please down the street back towards the lake from where I’d just come. He looked as me as he passed, with that tricksters gleam in his eye and just kept on going. He seemed to say “What are you gonna do about it?”
I’m not really sure what I’m going to do about it, but it’s clear that the animal kingdom and their spiritual counterparts are calling out to me. Animal wisdom, I think.
“And so far blameless proves my enterprise. That I have annointed those poor souls eyes.”
“Think of your friends, your family.”
“No! And so far am I glad it so did sort, As this their jangling I esteem a sport.”
And later:
“You have torn our ancient love asunder. Take comfort he no more shall see my face, who I do love and do until my death.”
“I have a devise to make all well. Crush this herb into the lovers’ eyes, whose liqour has this virtuous property. To take from their minds all error and make their eyeballs roll with wanted sight. When next they wake all this derision shall seem a dream or foolish vision. Don’t haste, get to the play tonight. With some luck there, all things shall be right.”
“I swear to you by Cupids strongest bow, by all the vows that ever men have broke. I’ll be there.”
interactions and experience
I was thinking earlier about a difference that I don’t think we pay enough attention to, perhaps one that we don’t even acknowledge most of the time. It seems to me that we, in our unquestioning acceptance of an objective knowable reality, that we place a great deal of weight upon two things. First, an occurrence or existence, and secondly our reaction to that occurrence or existence.
We tend to view things as part of a two tier system. A song is played. We react to the song. A light flashes. We react to the light. Perhaps it’s all the thinking about the intersection between fire and water lately, but I’m kind of hung up on the middle part that we don’t mention.
This is something that I’ve put a lot of thought into before, but never looked at it from this angle. We talk about stimulus and reaction. But we tend to ignore the defining feature, which is interaction. Our experience of the stimulus is not the same thing as our reaction to the stimulus. Reaction is the counter-stimulus that results. Our experience is the part that happens before we act in response to that stimulus.
When we place our hand over a candle flame, the sensation of heat in our palm is the result of the experience. It is the reaction of our nerves interacting with the energy/heat that is rising from the candle.
Objectively we don’t really have a good way of examining or talking about that place of interaction, just as we don’t objectively have a good way of talking about life. We categorize life based on it’s behaviors, on the patterns it exhibits, but these are indicators of life, not life itself.
So I’m interested, as I have been for a long time, in how our understanding of the world, and of each other, would be different if we acknowledge that our experience of a song, or a color, or a candle-flame is not different only because of our reaction, but different because the interaction, the experience itself is different.
It goes in the face of what might be considered common sense, but we know that no two people perceive things identically. Everyone experiences the universe in their own way. The reason I’m thinking about this, is because I’m thinking a lot about how I and others interact with the Divine.
I’m wondering if one of the reasons we have such difficulty helping each other to feel the light of the divine, to touch each other, has to do with a failure to understand the core truth of our experience, that our experience is unique to us, and trying to replicate it with another person is ludicrous.
This doesn’t mean we can’t communicate our experiences of the Divine, or that we can’t understand each other. I’m not sure what all the implications are yet, but I know that it’s important to my ministry to understand this. The core tenet of the Brotherhood of the Phoenix is “Find the divine in your own experience.” There is nothing I personally feel more important than that understanding. And I find it interesting that we chose the word experience. We’re not talking about our reactions to the divine, but our experience of the world. The Divine is be found in the intersection of stimulus and response. Ideally, we are conscious and in communion with the Divine, and so our reactions are governed by that understanding, by that recognition of the Divine.
I feel like I’ve lost the plot a little here, so I’ll try and come back to the lack of point. Nobody can tell you how to experience the divine, or where you will find it. What we can do is help you recognize the divine when you do find it.
I actually think that a great deal of our trouble connection with God is based on the simple fact that we don’t notice the Divine when it’s right in front of us. One of my favorite lines about God is:
God hears and answers all your prayers. What we forget is that sometimes the answer is no.
I think I may have first heard that out of George Carlin’s mouth, but I’m not certain. I believe that the Divine is both immanent and transcendent. I believe that we experience God far more often than we realize, and that what makes a person spiritual is learning to recognize God when we encounter her.
feeling small
I’m sitting in the study and listening to Sooj music tonight. The only light is a candle and what comes off the monitor. Incense to please myself and the spirits.
I’m not sure what’s up, but I’ve got that “why do I bother” feeling at the moment. I hate that feeling. Detest it really. I have that weak feeling that makes me wonder if anything I do makes a difference to anybody. Logic doesn’t help, and I don’t want to manipulate myself out of the feeling.
There’s a line used in a Flobots song, that I think is a quote from a civil rights activist, but I don’t know for certain. It goes something like this:
What you win in the immediate battles is little compared to the effort you put into it but if you see that as a part of this total movement to build a new world, you know what could be. You do have a choice. You don’t have to be a part of the world of the lynchers. You can join the other America.
It makes me think of another quote. One of the ads going around for some charity or another. A well known actor, perhaps Noah Wylie, says something along the lines of:
It seems like the problem is so big that anything we do would just be a drop in the bucket. Maybe that’s why we don’t think about it.
Sorrow’s Song is playing now. This is possibly my most favorite of every lyrical song Sooj has ever written. It’s not even the lyrics. It’s just the music itself. It does something to me. It feels like hope. It lifts me up.
Back to the topic though, I feel a little like that first quote. It is so hard to make little tiny changes, even in our own life, and they don’t seem to add up to much. Logically I know very well that my work is part of a larger tide of change. Transformation comes as the culmination of many smaller fires. But sometimes despair is on the menu. When I look at all the things I want to do and try and figure out how to do them it feels like being crushed.
Now I know that feeling of being crushed is an illusion. I feel crushed because I am feeling small right now. I am feeling defeated because I’m 29 and I feel like I’ve squandered the best opportunities of my life. It’s times like this when the presence of the Divine in my live is difficult to find. But it is times like this when we need the Divine most.
Now is when I need the strength of my gods to help me along. So I think about the blessings that I have in my life. All the people who are dear to me, my teachers, my family. I think about the precious gift of life that I posess. About my body, however much I’ve maltreated it, strong and flexible, willing to do pretty much whatever I need it to do.
And it is this time to, that it’s important to remember that I am not alone. It is my precious habit of reminding the people around me that they aren’t alone. It is something that I realize I don’t recognize enough for myself. I’m not alone. I’m surrounded by people who struggle the same way I do, and we support each other as best we can.
And that’s the way it goes some nights. And for tonight, just keeping it in my mind that I am not alone is enough. It quiets me and helps me relax into the work, even though there isn’t much work left to be done tonight. Perhaps I will sleep more peacefully as a result.
I leave you tonight with a quote from Sorrow’s Song. This line always touches me. It makes me think of all the nights I’ve spent with my friends and family, talking late into the night, through the darkest hours, until dawn was beginning to break in the east.
Does it not seem strange to ask to talk by first light instead of last.
Fire principle, Water principle
It’s 12:05am. Monday. George and K have already gone to bed. The lights are still on, so I suspect they’re going through their own night time rituals. I’m sitting here, feeling a bit lonely, a bit depressed, and quite a bit horny. I know that this is not news, but it is definitely on my mind. I’ve got to make a move towards some sexy-time soon. I’ve begun to whine about it, and I hate whining. I really hate whining.
But on to more interesting things. I’ve been saying I was going to write about Fire Principle and Water Principle for a few days now, and here I am, finally with nothing else more pressing on my mind, so lets go for it.
I started thinking about this because Herbis Orbis posted about the upcoming Summer Solstice. Litha, Midsummer, is the celebration of the longest day of the year. It is the height of the suns power. In the Brotherhood we have Apotheosis in early july, to celebrate the power of the phoenix at the height of his ascent, the culmination of her transformative power.
But Herbis Orbis brought up a good point. The longest day is also the shortest night. It is the day/night when the power of the sun, the Fire Principle, pierces the veil (indeed, midsummer is often considered the time when the veil of the unknown, of the Faerie, is opened wide and the mysteries of the hidden realms revealed and exposed to the noumenal world) of the Water Principle, creating the spark of life that nourishes that darkness, gives us a nugget of spirit to seek out in the dark times, and prepares for the rebirth of the sun at midwinter.
I tend to look at these principles from a somewhat hermetic standpoint, although my own slant on it is definitely not cannonical bardon. Live is the intersection between fire and water. The expansive force is always trapped in the contractive force. If we look at the very universe we exist in, it is largely a void of nothingness, an empty vacuum that is cold. Ironically, though this vacuum is cold, and is often thought to rip things apart (due to the decompression matter experiences when exposed to a vacuum), it is actually the most powerful example of contractive force there is. For in a vacuum the power of gravity is best observed. Two masses are drawn inexplicably to each other with no explanation. The power of contractive force is this pull. What we understand as a function of matter, that it has an inexorable force which attracts it to other matter, might be from another perspective, a function of the void in which that matter exists, contracting, forcing that existence into more potent, more solid, more dense forms.
Another way of looking at it, perhaps the best way, is to observe that Water principle, contractive force, is at it’s base the principle of stillness. If contractive force ruled, there would ultimately be no motion. In too large a quantity it is stagnation and death. It is entropy.
The Fire principle, Expansive force, is the chaotic movement of choice, of life. It is the energy that is bound up in material existence. It is, at it’s base principle, that which prevents stagnation. It is choice.
I visualize these principles interacting as a clockwise spinning mass of blue/water. This energy is ever tightening upon itself, struggling to create a singularity where there is no motion, to contract until it can contract no more. The Fire principle, is red or orange, and it is contained inside the contracting water. It spins counter-clockwise, expanding against the contractive force of water.
Where these forces meet, at the ring of bubbling force, of integration that I see as purple, although bardon would say yellow, is the stuff of life. It is the hard won balance between stillness and chaos. It is the truth that life is not all about choices as we would sometimes prefer to believe, but is about choices balanced by understanding, by compassion.
This is perhaps why so many people who are strong in their choices seem to be unbalanced and chaotic. If you are overly ruled by the fire principle you may often make choices based upon your own right to make a choice, and doing so, like the fire principle, you act only to sustain chaos, to create more motion in the universe. If you are making a choice, choosing to act merely to exercise your ability to act, then you are exciting chaos. This is not my way, but I do not feel it is a wrong way. It is simply a way of existing.
Similarly, there are many people in the world who seek to abdicate as much of their ability to choose as they can. Their mantra is ‘go with the flow,’ and in so doing they create power for the contractive force, balancing and countering disturbances made by the expansive force of those making choices.
And the middle path, to exercise our right to choose in a way that emphasizes the purple ring, making a larger area of interaction between expansion and contraction. I work to exist here, although it is my instinct to go with the flow. I must make a constant effort to choose, to act, and to do so in a compassionate, aware, and vital way that will empower myself and those around me.
This is all important, and is all on my mind now, because Summer Solstice is one of the times when we can see an interesting part of the dance between contractive and expansive forces. As Herbis Orbis notes, this is the time when the light of the sun pierces to the very heart of darkness, and empowers it for the coming season. In my model as described above, it is more accurate to see that the fire principle spikes, and sears through the contractive force of water, bleeding it’s chaotic expansive force into the void elsewhere, thus ensuring that the cycle continues. The existence of chaos outside the localized contractive bubble begins the creation of a new bubble, a new set of balances, a new universe, a new fountain of life.
The void that is space, that is the essence of contractive force, that is the murky waters of Netzach, engulfs and swallows the bright light of the escaping sun, surrounding it, and contracting against it. For a time that contraction grows ever stronger and it seems inevitable that the fire of chaos will be extinguished. But eventually, at midwinter, the pressure reaches a critical point, and the chaotic force, which has now been driven down to a point smaller than we can understand (imagine the big bang theory and the beginning of the universe as we know it here) explodes outwards, pushing the contractive force back and creating an enormous sphere of purple, with a tiny dot of orange in the middle, and a small coating of blue on the outside.
And we find ourself at midsummer again, with the power of the sun about to burst out into the void to create new universes, expending itself and allowing the contractive force of water principle draw down upon it again.
And that, in theory, is fire principle and water principle. Share the gift!