is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Desire, again. Alone (again).
Desire, again. Alone (again).
Today at the conference, I was sitting around with a few friends, when one of them began discussing one of the panels he had seen, something having to do with desire and transgression. This led to him positing that eroticism is all about transgression. So, for instance, he couldn�t see how anyone who engages in polyamory could sustain desire over time because the possibility of transgression is removed if you can love anyone you want. I hope it is apparent right away to everyone how much this sucks as a claim (regardless of what you think about polyamory, and I laughingly told the story about a friend of mine who is polyamorous and likes to tell me how liberated he is, as if to suggest that I am not free). I don�t mean the claim sucks because I want people to be true to each other in constellations of two only (it is nice when they are; but often they aren�t; that is beside the point) but because it misses the point about what it is that desire wants. My friend M got in there right away, before I had a chance to say anything. He said, �but you�re assuming that if you were allowed to love anyone you wanted, you could love everyone you wanted.� X was confused. I said, �he means that sometimes the object of your desire won�t cooperate. you will not be wanted back.� M added, �it isn�t just about what you are free to will.� X was not convinced. Various people joined in the conversation (they were all men except me, again, for some reason) and talk drifted over to Bataille and eroticism and transgression, and X kept on with his argument about how desire requires rules or laws to constrain it in order to be what it is. And finally I said, �it just seems to me that even without the existence of law or any kind of rules hemming desire in, plenty of things resist it or get in its way.� X decided maybe he was being too theoretical about things. Ha. Just like an academic to theorize into desire even more problems than it already bears. Or maybe that�s just how it works for him. He wouldn�t be the only one. If it works for him, so be it. This conference is especially strange this year. For instance, usually it is an event full of late nights of drinking and dinners out on the town and the like. And yet this time I�ve managed to spend almost all of my time alone in my hotel room. And not only because I�m so tired. People keep having dinner plans with organized groups that I�m not part of, and tonight I was even told indirectly that I wasn�t invited to a meal shared by what in the past I considered my core crew of friends here. It�s strange. I was sad about it earlier tonight, but that passed as soon as I got some food on my own and sat down to do some work. I realized that there were plenty of other friends at the conference who I would have loved to have dined with but didn�t run into before leaving on my own, and then also there were even more people who I did run into and chose not to dine with. So, though it�s odd and mysterious that I�ve been excluded from one event, upon reflection I�m going to have to conclude that it�s just bad timing plus the possible (and even then unlikely) ill will of one person. Sociality is challenging. So I�m in my hotel room watching Spirited Away, Miyazaki Japanime, eating caesar salad with salmon and spicy french fries. This is a nice hotel, with fluffy robes and free high speed internet and free bottles of spring water, etc., and if I were out on the town with the usual suspects, I�d probably be wishing I were home watching TV, since I�m currently officially tired of traveling. Plus, it�s below freezing, windy, and snowing sideways outside. I�m supposed to meet a few other friends in the hotel bar at 11pm but part of me is hoping they are too tired for that, too! Anyway, there�s something perfect about watching Spirited Away right now. It�s so dark, and sad and scary (childhood scary), about overcoming fears, and about doing so for the sake of love. And it�s all about being left alone, and learning that it�s OK. Ha. Who knows, maybe someday I will meet the really cute boy who loves me and who is sometimes a foxy dragon (with a wolf-like furr-ocious head) who is actually secretly the river that saved me from drowning when I was a child! It could happen.10:57 p.m. - March 17, 2006
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