Rip It Open, Pour It Out
Nov. 28th, 2007 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormSo here we go, several nighttimes under the bridge since my last post and leaning hard on the change pedal, perhaps. My life is always transition, of course, and this has been a smooth fast one. Picture a stream coming to a deep cut that flows strongly downhill. There may yet be rocks.
On the night of my Thanksgiving I was very sick. I shopped and cooked all day, going to Famous Foods, Sunrise Produce, and Sweet Cherubim and Eternal Abundance on the Drive with Angus and Marvin, my lifesavers for the day. I spent a lot of money on food and then cooked and cooked. About four o'clock my throat started to feel daggers in it again, but my voice didn't go until later when the pain got to be a little much for me. People started really arriving till seven and I was in them for awhile, visiting and joining in the singing in my kitchen and the dancing in my downstairs. Then I went to bed.
Before I went to bed I saw so many people I was glad to see. People came and ate (I didn't end up making all the food, but people had plenty until I went to sleep) and talked. I saw Ellen and Adrian again, and remembered once more how much I *like* Ellen. She's thoughtful and warm and her company is lovely. There were more people, too, and I can't even start on names because almost everyone I love in the world came through with a few exceptions. Marvin and Angus kept me from being overwhelmed and kept me amazed with their kitchen magic (cheese-crust apple pie! that moussaka! that dairy-and-egg-free tapioca pudding!) and I was so happy. The oven caught fire, and my house was warmed from the centre outwards.
Before sleep there was a moonlight walk with Angus and we started talking. That conversation didn't end for days, continuing through the loss of my voice and snaking very gently through many of the tripwires I'd set without catching on them. For the next few days I more-or-less slept and talked and slept and talked and that was it -- less talking than you might imagine because I was not well. There was a bit of kitchen cleanup, but Marvin and Bob magicked most of that away after and Vicki (the guest, not the roommate) did during.
I was restless at home. I couldn't sit down, I couldn't stay still. I couldn't rest. I spent time away from home. I thought a lot. At one point I reread Khamura's livejournal back to several years ago where we broke up - I had never backread before. I brooded some.
I've lived in a lot of patterns in my life. Some of them I like. Some of them I don't. Some are matters of pure indifference. There is, however, a growing feeling of control to what I'm doing now. I used to be afraid of being out of work, for instance, where now I approach it as an intriguing situation that has interesting potential. A free evening alone used to be a tragedy where now it's something quickly filled if not left as an opportunity. I can live where I want, with someone or without. I can keep my mind on an even keel or I can let it lift and drop for a bit of a ride. I can do a distant dance of attraction or I can electrify onto someone or I can ignore them altogether. I can learn new skills. I can be pleasant and distant, pleasant and close, or unpleasant and either of those things. I can laugh at things or I can be pulled under.
I've had a pattern for a long time of thrill-seeking in my relationships. I'd get into something accidentally, stumble on something that was exciting and fun and intimate, and I would ride that. Another thing would come along and I'd embrace it, and another, and eventually I'd run out of time and drop something. Things that were exciting and possible became yeses automatically because I wanted that thing, that new experience, and I didn't think particularly much about long-term practicalities or overall suitability.
It's been almost-but-not-quite ten years since my first experience with multiple people in bed, a little less time that I've been poly. Not a decade, but most of my relationship life and definitely a third of my whole life at least.
I consider it an orientation, polyamory. I can love many people at a time in the emotional sense-- that is, I can be closely drawn to many people at a time. When I was little I'd imagine scenarios that would result in sleeping between a bunch of people that I loved - say an earthquake that would trap all us five-year-olds at school so we'd have to sleep there, or improbable scenarios created to mash a bunch of my favourite book characters into one story with me in the middle. It was comforting.
My actions, though, are a different thing altogether than my emotions. My actions have ridden the back of my emotions and attention span, and I haven't stopped to acknowledge that this has been a pattern. I've hurt people this way -- diving in with intensity and such assurance and then wandering away again after six months or two years. I haven't had the self-knowledge to know what I was getting into, what I could give, what I couldn't promise. Sometimes I haben't even had the self-knowledge to see what was happening as it was happening, holding instead onto the idea of love-the-feeling as love-the-commitment as obviously-forever.
Lying to myself, though, has hurt people I care about quite a bit. I want to do better. They all deserve it. I also deserve to be more forthright, to admit what I want to myself, to look at my purposes. So, I'm going to.
That's all.
Zeugma
Zeugma. From the Greek, zeugnynai, to join together; from
a pair of animals linked at labor;
yoked oxen. The Greeks, of course, for whom beginnings signified
better than endings, alpha & omega, for whom
x was just another letter: xiphoid, xerophagy, xenophobia, xoanon.
Civilization, perforce, is abecedarian.
When XenophonÃs hoplites charged the Persians at Cunaxa he
denied the agency of local gods, mistaking
vox populi for vox angelica, voice of a suffering populace
entirely freed of fleshly yoke,
uplifted in exquisite agony. Such are the costs of our transmigration.
Fish demand ladders, wooden horses
transhumance, referring to reindeer but apropos in Ilium,
green-fingered Lydia or Mesopotamia,
scene of the tidal clash of cultures & languages, ebbs & floods
hardly unique to Persians & Greeks.
Recall the illiterate Pizarro against the hummingbird-feathered
Inca Atahualpa, sun-god & moon-
queen trampled into celestial dust by a few dozen Spaniards
jointly with their horses, gunpowder, &
priestly blessing to sanctify such slaughter in the name of the king of
kings. Back to Xenophon & the Ten Thousand:
on the retreat now, following the Tigris, they come to a ruined city,
Larissa, inhabited by Medes, thought to be
none other than Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, hippogriffs become
Medean in the wake of serial conquest,
median point on their march from Babylon toward the hills of Armenia,
none cheered by that barren vision, dire
Larissa, omen of defeat, citadel of political impermanence.
On the next day, great Nineveh, abandoned:
kings, senechals, satraps, seraphs, jesters, fletchers, peltasts, potters,
priestly & noble classes--vanished con-
jointly into equitable oblivion, weaver & wool, smith & tool,
queen & fool. So much for the Assyrians.
Ink, a luxury, so no texts but wind-scoured stone remain to help us
recall them, our contemporary ignorance
hardly less monumental than XenophonÃs self-serving chronicle,
scene by scene inventing ancient history.
Green no longer, that Fertile Crescent, mislabelled by an en-
-tranced human stab at metaphoric order.
Fish into amphibians, logograms into syllabaries, seas into lands
uplifted in autochthonic agons
entirely unwitnessed, template free of cartographic correlatives,
vox barbara or vox nihilim, celestial music
denied in our fury to claim an alphabet forged from the metals of chaos.
When the ox moves, the plow moves.
Civilization, perforce, is boustrophedonic: x-y-z; z-y-
x. Better the blue mud of the Euphrates,
better the raw ore of belief than these chains of syntax, this
yoke of definitions. Xoanon:
a primitive idol resembling the rough block from which it was carved.
Zeugma: maker & vessel, master & slave.
by Campbell McGrath
On the night of my Thanksgiving I was very sick. I shopped and cooked all day, going to Famous Foods, Sunrise Produce, and Sweet Cherubim and Eternal Abundance on the Drive with Angus and Marvin, my lifesavers for the day. I spent a lot of money on food and then cooked and cooked. About four o'clock my throat started to feel daggers in it again, but my voice didn't go until later when the pain got to be a little much for me. People started really arriving till seven and I was in them for awhile, visiting and joining in the singing in my kitchen and the dancing in my downstairs. Then I went to bed.
Before I went to bed I saw so many people I was glad to see. People came and ate (I didn't end up making all the food, but people had plenty until I went to sleep) and talked. I saw Ellen and Adrian again, and remembered once more how much I *like* Ellen. She's thoughtful and warm and her company is lovely. There were more people, too, and I can't even start on names because almost everyone I love in the world came through with a few exceptions. Marvin and Angus kept me from being overwhelmed and kept me amazed with their kitchen magic (cheese-crust apple pie! that moussaka! that dairy-and-egg-free tapioca pudding!) and I was so happy. The oven caught fire, and my house was warmed from the centre outwards.
Before sleep there was a moonlight walk with Angus and we started talking. That conversation didn't end for days, continuing through the loss of my voice and snaking very gently through many of the tripwires I'd set without catching on them. For the next few days I more-or-less slept and talked and slept and talked and that was it -- less talking than you might imagine because I was not well. There was a bit of kitchen cleanup, but Marvin and Bob magicked most of that away after and Vicki (the guest, not the roommate) did during.
I was restless at home. I couldn't sit down, I couldn't stay still. I couldn't rest. I spent time away from home. I thought a lot. At one point I reread Khamura's livejournal back to several years ago where we broke up - I had never backread before. I brooded some.
I've lived in a lot of patterns in my life. Some of them I like. Some of them I don't. Some are matters of pure indifference. There is, however, a growing feeling of control to what I'm doing now. I used to be afraid of being out of work, for instance, where now I approach it as an intriguing situation that has interesting potential. A free evening alone used to be a tragedy where now it's something quickly filled if not left as an opportunity. I can live where I want, with someone or without. I can keep my mind on an even keel or I can let it lift and drop for a bit of a ride. I can do a distant dance of attraction or I can electrify onto someone or I can ignore them altogether. I can learn new skills. I can be pleasant and distant, pleasant and close, or unpleasant and either of those things. I can laugh at things or I can be pulled under.
I've had a pattern for a long time of thrill-seeking in my relationships. I'd get into something accidentally, stumble on something that was exciting and fun and intimate, and I would ride that. Another thing would come along and I'd embrace it, and another, and eventually I'd run out of time and drop something. Things that were exciting and possible became yeses automatically because I wanted that thing, that new experience, and I didn't think particularly much about long-term practicalities or overall suitability.
It's been almost-but-not-quite ten years since my first experience with multiple people in bed, a little less time that I've been poly. Not a decade, but most of my relationship life and definitely a third of my whole life at least.
I consider it an orientation, polyamory. I can love many people at a time in the emotional sense-- that is, I can be closely drawn to many people at a time. When I was little I'd imagine scenarios that would result in sleeping between a bunch of people that I loved - say an earthquake that would trap all us five-year-olds at school so we'd have to sleep there, or improbable scenarios created to mash a bunch of my favourite book characters into one story with me in the middle. It was comforting.
My actions, though, are a different thing altogether than my emotions. My actions have ridden the back of my emotions and attention span, and I haven't stopped to acknowledge that this has been a pattern. I've hurt people this way -- diving in with intensity and such assurance and then wandering away again after six months or two years. I haven't had the self-knowledge to know what I was getting into, what I could give, what I couldn't promise. Sometimes I haben't even had the self-knowledge to see what was happening as it was happening, holding instead onto the idea of love-the-feeling as love-the-commitment as obviously-forever.
Lying to myself, though, has hurt people I care about quite a bit. I want to do better. They all deserve it. I also deserve to be more forthright, to admit what I want to myself, to look at my purposes. So, I'm going to.
That's all.
Zeugma
Zeugma. From the Greek, zeugnynai, to join together; from
a pair of animals linked at labor;
yoked oxen. The Greeks, of course, for whom beginnings signified
better than endings, alpha & omega, for whom
x was just another letter: xiphoid, xerophagy, xenophobia, xoanon.
Civilization, perforce, is abecedarian.
When XenophonÃs hoplites charged the Persians at Cunaxa he
denied the agency of local gods, mistaking
vox populi for vox angelica, voice of a suffering populace
entirely freed of fleshly yoke,
uplifted in exquisite agony. Such are the costs of our transmigration.
Fish demand ladders, wooden horses
transhumance, referring to reindeer but apropos in Ilium,
green-fingered Lydia or Mesopotamia,
scene of the tidal clash of cultures & languages, ebbs & floods
hardly unique to Persians & Greeks.
Recall the illiterate Pizarro against the hummingbird-feathered
Inca Atahualpa, sun-god & moon-
queen trampled into celestial dust by a few dozen Spaniards
jointly with their horses, gunpowder, &
priestly blessing to sanctify such slaughter in the name of the king of
kings. Back to Xenophon & the Ten Thousand:
on the retreat now, following the Tigris, they come to a ruined city,
Larissa, inhabited by Medes, thought to be
none other than Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, hippogriffs become
Medean in the wake of serial conquest,
median point on their march from Babylon toward the hills of Armenia,
none cheered by that barren vision, dire
Larissa, omen of defeat, citadel of political impermanence.
On the next day, great Nineveh, abandoned:
kings, senechals, satraps, seraphs, jesters, fletchers, peltasts, potters,
priestly & noble classes--vanished con-
jointly into equitable oblivion, weaver & wool, smith & tool,
queen & fool. So much for the Assyrians.
Ink, a luxury, so no texts but wind-scoured stone remain to help us
recall them, our contemporary ignorance
hardly less monumental than XenophonÃs self-serving chronicle,
scene by scene inventing ancient history.
Green no longer, that Fertile Crescent, mislabelled by an en-
-tranced human stab at metaphoric order.
Fish into amphibians, logograms into syllabaries, seas into lands
uplifted in autochthonic agons
entirely unwitnessed, template free of cartographic correlatives,
vox barbara or vox nihilim, celestial music
denied in our fury to claim an alphabet forged from the metals of chaos.
When the ox moves, the plow moves.
Civilization, perforce, is boustrophedonic: x-y-z; z-y-
x. Better the blue mud of the Euphrates,
better the raw ore of belief than these chains of syntax, this
yoke of definitions. Xoanon:
a primitive idol resembling the rough block from which it was carved.
Zeugma: maker & vessel, master & slave.
by Campbell McGrath
