Ein Liebchen oder Knabchen Wunscht Papageno Sich.

I leave off the topic of religion for a bit (no doubt you, cherished reader, do not find my ecclesiastical ramblings as relevant as I do) to pursue another topic that may nauseate you just as much, namely love. I realize that I tend to get what I call plaintive and others call whiny when pursuing this topic, but please read on, nonetheless.

I think, in my artless little way, that the most romatic story in the world is Die Zauberflote, an opera by Mozart. There are, no doubt, better operas, and there are surely more lucid, engaging love stories, but none has captured my heart and resonated so clearly with my experience as The Magic Flute has. Don't get me wrong; Tamino is a gunny-sack romantic lead as far as I'm concerned, and Pamina is only marginally better. What fascinates me is the way the librettist--not Mozart, but Schikaneder--has drawn the story of Papageno nearly parallel to the supposed primary romance without any seeming necessity. It is this character, Papageno, that I relate to so thoroughly: talkative, good-hearted, funny, spontaneous, but fundamentally weak.

Papageno is convinced (as am I) that there exists a "Papagena," a mate for him with whom he fits so completely that even their names match. He gets sucked into the primary storyline rather lucklessly, where he meets the beautiful Pamina. He commiserates with her that, although he is "der beste geist von der welt," (the best spirit in the world), he has no one to love. Pamina assures him that heaven is not deaf to his pleas, and will soon send him a friend. Papageno is then led into the temple where he is told that he will only meet Papagena if he successfully undergoes a series of trials. Alas! He proves too weak and fails each of the tests in succession, whereas brave, handsome, and virtuous Tamino (pbblt!) succeeds and is united with Pamina in a splendid and ecstatic climax. This would be the most fitting dramatic end to the story, but after Tamino's spectacular success there is a petit denouement that, for me, is the point of the entire opera. In a garden, Papageno calls in vain for Papagena, and resolves to end his life. Just in time, three spirits inform Papageno that if he rings his magic bells (which he has carried all along, as per The Wizard of Oz) Papagena will appear. He rings, she appears, and they sing a simple little duet that is the penultimate number of the entire opera.

From a literary perspective, it is fascinating to me that the union of Papageno and Papagena is given as much weight as that of Tamino and Pamina. After all, Papageno is neither stalwart nor particularly virtuous. Nonetheless, even such men as he and I are granted happiness by heaven. And this is not a makeshift love, either. Papageno and his mate match perfectly, as though they were made for each other. They are, as Plato would say, each other's missing half. Perhaps, cherished reader, you begin to understand why this story is the source of so much hope for me. If my virtuous passage through a series of difficult tests is required to meet my one, true match, I am doomed. Although I have much going for me, I am fundamentally weak. What, though, if my match is out there somewhere, and will come to me eventually regardless of my weakness? The mere thought of such a thing is enough to make me weep messily, and so I leave you now to go do exactly that.

Phooey on John 3:16.

At one point in my religious development the passage in the Bible that touched me the most and never failed to make me cry was Daniel 3:16-18, to wit:

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego answered, and they were saying to the king: "O Nebuchadnezzar, we are under no necessity in this regard to say back a word to you. If it is to be, our God whom we are serving is able to rescue us. Out of the burning fiery furnace and out of your hand, O king, he will rescue us. But if not, let it become known to you, O king, that your gods are not the ones we are serving, and the image of gold that you have set up we will not worship."

This may strike you, cherished reader, as a curious favorite passage, and I have never met another whom it affects as it does me. The strength of the sentiment lies, for me, in the youth's uncertainty: "If it is to be, our God . . . is able to rescue us," and the unspoken caveat, "but he might not." The three youth's devotion was in no way tied, therefore, to their personal salvation. In fact, it seems unlikely that they had any idea of or hope for an afterlife, as such ideas are all but absent from the Hebrew Scriptures. It was unimportant whether they live or die, prosper or suffer, except as it related to larger issues. For a long time, this struck me as the most noble and genuine form of religious sentiment: that one's purpose is not to live rightly in anticipation of a reward, but to weigh in on the cosmic balance in the case of Good v. Evil, and then to return to the dust. Thus I have never had any desire to exist posthumously in heaven, or even to be resurrected somehow. I simply want to have lived purposefully and well.

I have since come to realize that the universe is not so fragile as to rely on my performance in this life to settle some overwhelmingly dramatic issue of good and evil. Instead of a delicately balanced scale upon which my actions are weighed according to their virtue, I have come to see the universe as an enormous, whirring organism with which I can either be in sympathy or discord. In other words, I need the universe far more than it needs me. It is appropriate, therefore, that the following verse has has come to replace my old, Hebrew favorite:

After being baptized, Jesus immediately came up from the water; and look! the heavens were opened up, and he saw descending like a dove God's spirit upon him. Look! Also there was a voice from the heavens that said: "This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved."
Matthew 3:16,17

At one point I wanted nothing more than the experience of throwing myself into the fire to prove my disregard for my own fate. Although that still appeals to my dramatic side, I think I want most of all to hear, with apodictic certainty, that I am approved. I think it is quite true that we have an internal voice, leading us if we listen. Some people have always known that they are meant to pursue a certain vocation, for instance, or that a certain person is their destined life-mate. I think that if I really listen honestly, this is what my voice says: "I am a son of the universe, and I have a reason." I argue with it; I deny it; but it refuses to shut up. And every time I slow down enough to hear it, it speaks: "You are enough." This is what God said to Jesus, and I believe it is what God says to all people.

Two ways of being

It has long been a roadblock to my formation of a cohesive paradigm that there seem to be two useful ways of being in this universe. The one, which we will call Horizons-being in honor of a personal development class I took, consists of getting off your lazy ass and willing whatever it is you want into existence. As it turns out, this way of being is remarkably effective. If one wants a better job, for example, it really does work to simply declare it and throw your intention behind it. The problem lies in the fact that there is another, equally fundamental way of being that I will call zen-being for obvious reasons. I believe, for example, that there are certain things we are not meant to have right now and will not achieve through even the clearest and most forceful pursuit. For instance, my current experience is that Horizons-being does not serve me in the search for love. At the same time, can I really justify sitting still and waiting for love to fall into my lap? The conflict between these two equally legitimate ways of being has been a source of confusion for me, and as a result I have vacillated and achieved nothing important--until now.

Here's a passage from the Bhagavad Gita that finally cleared it up for me:

"Therefore, without being attached to the fruits of activities, one should act as a matter of duty, for by working without attachment one attains the Supreme."
3:19, Bhaktivedanta translation.

An important distinction is drawn here between our actions and the results of our actions. It is impossible (or at least undesirable) to function completely without taking action. While it would be possible for me to minimize action to the very barest of essentials by adopting a monastic lifestyle, I refuse on the grounds that I am determined to actively share my light with others. I can, however (and please don't think of me as some profound sage; this just occurred to me yesterday although I've been familiar with this text for years), eliminate the desperate, grabbing aspect of whatever action I take. Say, for instance, that I want to meet a romantic match. Horizons-being would involve constantly chatting up complete strangers and not taking no for an answer. Allow me tell you that, although I am handsome, fun and smart, this hasn't worked. Zen-being, on the other hand, would involve complete acceptance of solitude and indifference to romance. While I don't claim to have ever been this zen, it doesn't matter because I really am not okay with, in twenty years, not having an intimate other to hold and confide in, "I'm scared." No matter how many other good things I have in my life, I refuse to play alone. What the Bhagavad Gita suggests, however, is that one can act in concert with one's goals without getting broken and turbulent when things don't look as expected. I know, for instance, that the surest sign of an action's growth value is its scariness. Therefore, it is incumbent upon me to talk to people whom I find attractive in the name of my own growth. I needn't, however, become disjointed and beat myself up for not being committed when I get the stiff-arm.

Allow me to put it in my own words: I can only confidently say that what exists in my life is meant to exist if I have taken the action that I am meant to take. If I have refrained from action out of fear, pride, or comfort, then what exists in my life is not what is meant to exist. If I have acted bravely and honorably, then I can be certain that whatever my life looks like, it is meant to look that way.

And I am so energized by these words that I think it just possible you can feel my spirit vibrate as you read them. Whoever reads this, I love you.

How I know when I'm in alignment with the universe:

I tend to picture the universe (a la Leibniz) as a collection of "monads" that interact with and affect one another much like ball bearings. One tends to spin in the same direction as one's surroundings, and if one is out of sync with the people in his or her vicinity, or with the universe as a whole, the result is friction. This is, of course, a very crude and imperfect model, but it serves to illustrate my current perception, namely that I am spinning in the right direction, and a sort of resonant harmony, a music of the spheres, if you will, is the result. When I am in this state, which is, like most growth states, scary and uncomfortable, one interesting side effect is the appearance of poetry in my consciousness. It may sound bizarre, but when I am in alignment, poems burst, like Athena, from my cranium fully formed. All that is required is transcription, and I cannot rest until I have recorded whatever mental vignette has occurred to me. I share this with you, treasured reader, because one occurred to me last night. I sat bolt upright in bed and channelled the following from my smarter, deeper recesses:

* * *
Boxes

On the south wall of my room tonight
Is a closet. It's dark
In my room, so the closet looks
Like a black square with hinged jaws.

On the west wall is a window.
The moon makes the blinds glow faintly
And resemble a Rothko painting
With a dark line through the middle.

On the east wall is a picture of my Mother's,
An antique, of a woman she's never met.
Pointless, blurry, and equivalent
To the man that came with a frame.

On the north wall is a mirror.
I want someone to see my heart,
Charred, poisonous fishhooks,
And love me violently.

* * *
Anyway, shortly thereafter, I wrote this:

* * *
I have a significantly other.
Sometimes I imagine as I lie in bed
That he appears and stands over me
With a big, ornate knife
And cuts me into rings.
The green pulp spills out
From the slices of rind,
But suddenly he's not there,
And I am, alone.

It's nice to be loved.

* * *
Both of these little epiphanies are a bit creepy, but they sprang from somewhere within me, so, for what it's worth, there they are. I take some consolation in believing that everyone is just a bit twisted, including you.

Not eaten by a Manticore.

Moving right along . . .

William James writes in The Varieties of Religious Experience:
"The human mind, with its diffrent possibilities of equilibirum, might be like a many-sided solid with diffrent surfaces on which it could lie flat . . . As it is pried up, say by a lever, from a position in which it lies on surface A, for instance, it will linger for a time unstably halfway up, and if the lever cease to urge it, it will tumble back or "relapse" under the continued pull of gravity. But if at last it rotate far enough for its centre of gravity to pass beyond surface A altogether, the [mind] will fall over, on surface B, say, and abide there permanently"

What I am currently experiencing, to extend the analogy, is a repeated nudging from some outside force. In addition to what I would call "hints" from the universe, I experience an urging from without that I am nearly convinced is on some level physical. Dare I hope that the dodecahedron of my experience is in imminent danger of revolving and coming to rest in a new position? I beg of whoever it is that controls this sort of thing to cease subtlety and gentleness. I desperately crave a new expreience, one that includes release of the love that is consuming me for want of any deserving outlet.

And fuck you, cherished reader, if you don't care for my writing. This is how I really think.

I Think There's Somebody in the House

I am completely creeped out right now. It's three in the morning, and I couldn't sleep, so I got up to go to the bathroom, and there's a light on downstairs that I know for a fact I did not turn on today. This happened a couple of days ago also, but I wasn't sure then whether or not I had turned it on. I am so scared of going down to see what's up, I am actually thinking of going back to bed and not trying not to think about it. I mean, if whoever it is was going to kill me in my sleep, they would have, right?

Now that I mention it, what I just wrote is absolutely a reflection of my approach to life at it worst. How many things in my life do I just pretend to ignore rather than face something scary or uncomfortable? Plenty, let me tell you. And it's kind of funny, because I'm actually not that terrified of a burglar, or even some kind of supernatural thing. If I knew what it was, I could deal with it. But I don't, and so here I sit, calmly typing whilst a homeless person is perhaps rummaging through my stuff.

Anyway, now that I have made that comparison to my life at large, I have no choice but to investigate. Often, when presented with a choice, I clearly identify one course of action as more virtuous or constructive, then shut down while I hedonistically pursue the opposite course. Going downstairs right now will serve as a signal that I no longer deactivate my consciousness to avoid being honest about my choices. If I fail to make another entry in this Blog, you will know that I was eaten by a Manticore.

I wrote a poem today.

I was sitting in the booth at the coffee shop reading William James' Varieties of Religious Experience when it occurred to me to write a poem. I wish that happened more often, but for the sake of posterity, here it is:

* * *

When the cashier told me they were out of whole-wheat bagels,
I responded, "That's okay; I'm accustomed to deprivation."
Afterward, I called myself a freak.
"Who talks like that?" I thought.

What I want right now
Is for a complete stranger
To sit down in this booth beside me.
What's more, I want to live in a world
Where such a thing is normal.

If that woman there
Sat down next to me right now,
Instead of "Who the hell are you?"
I would say, "Hello."
And tell her what my name is today.

* * *

Anyway, I think it fairly certain that nobody will ever read this blog, so I leave it to literary historians to uncover this trifle when I am dead. If you read this, please let me know anonymously.