is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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writhing in the tight dimensions of pain.
I woke up today, wrapped up in a ball of searing pain punctuated by throbbing, thinking the phrase, "writhing in the tight dimensions of pain." it's from somewhere in levinas' writings, either Otherwise than Being or "Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism." Anyway, as I was saying, Ouch.
Worry not... it's a menstrual thing, and will pass. I've dealt with much worse pain before.
In the moments just before waking, before I was fully conscious of the reasons for my tight posture, I had time to feel the other part of this syndrome: utter worthlessness and despair. O! the wonders of hormone poisoning! The power it wields is awesome, and no amount of reasoning can combat it. Today I am a worthless thing; no one would ever be fooled into standing by me for very long; everything I do is destined to be misconstrued or, more appropriately, utterly ignored, having no effect at all on the human world we are all supposed to share and build together; also, I am ugly and unfunny and full of bad ideas; I am an affect with no effect.
The problem here (one of them) is that writing such a thing does little justice to what it means to feel it. (If you felt anything reading it, it is because you have had those feelings before, and not because I've used reason to demonstrate a truth for you.) Writing this set of feelings makes them sound absurd, patently untrue, overly dramatic, even irresponsible. but that is because language is more comfortable with effect than it is with affect. language is all TCB and MIH (taking care of business, making it happen), and when it strays into pools of passivity, it doesn't know what to do so it does the only thing it can do: TCB and MIH, even though there's nothing there that 'making' could make happen.
However, sometimes a stumble and a stammer say more than a fully articulated sentence. And sometimes when language strays from its normal 'activity,' wondrous events occur, like music, or poetry, or singular words of love. (this is not one of those times.) But usually when it strays it's more like a cat in a full bathtub thinking that if it fights hard enough it won't actually be wet. There is a lot of necessary hubris in language. but sometimes the attempt is more important than whether or not it succeeds.
Physical pain is different. But just as it is easy to tell the difference between the spirit and the letter of the law in some circumstances and just as hard to show precisely where the dividing line is between them, physical and emotional pain are different but feed each other. And both can make it impossible to get out of bed.
{pause}
I got out of bed, drank a pepsi, and forced myself to do pilates. It helped, though at certain points I thought I was going to DIE (metaphorically, and perhaps I actually did), and it reminded me (surprise!) of something Nietzsche said about cruelty to self. The world (by which he means "other people") is only too happy to help you let yourself go, but it will back away in horror from those who have the strength to treat themselves with the cruelty required for self-overcoming. the world doesn't want to be challenged to be better than it is.
(ha.)
It is a much misunderstood remark that might be clarified by this anecdote. My friend Mark and I were once dining in Vancouver, and I said, "I'm writing this crazy nonacademic article on Nietzsche, and the first line is 'I am going to hurt you.'" He said, "let me guess, the second line is 'because I love you.'" Ha! It's true. (admit it, you love Mark now.) (It's the same old article called "Break" that's on the h2so4 website somewhere.)
So... though there is something hyperbolically ridiculous about hormone poisoning, there's also something metaphorically (as well as concretely) true about it. it's like writhing in the tight dimensions of pain: a reminder that we're all formed equally by what we choose and what we don't have any power to change. self-overcoming is about both: choosing well, and dealing well with what you're given.
today I feel like crap, on many different levels. I'm supposed to be working. will I?
(posted by sidekick II from benicia, ca)
1:31 p.m. - January 04, 2007
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