taboo

there is an impulse to when speaking about people who behave abhorrently, behave in ways that are antithetical, oppositional, to what one orients themselves towards as good or moral, there is an inclination, a perceived authoritative obligation to address their choices with a kind of vitriol. to assert oneself as against and to do so with the most drinkable, edible, vigor and rejection as possible. so that the collective may know who you are in reaction to how another appears. 

when someone does something distasteful, improper, taboo in relation to socially set and preserved standards, the reacting conversation and gossip easily becomes one that strips the subject of their humanity. the unspoken agreement of the righteousness of this act reflects a psychological logic of punishment : if you want to be outside of the norms of what we have deemed as human we will keep you there. it also reflects the belief that to be human is to be good, virtuous, to be human is to want at all costs to stay inside of those bounds. when in reality, to be bad, to be antagonistic, to be a mess, to be hateful, to be disruptive, to be obtuse, to be selfish, is so very very human.

i think people will say to that sentiment, oh we know. we know that humans are flawed. all of the sacred texts and wisdom of all of the thinkers and believers and writers and prayers and explorers and lovers and dreamers will tell us that. it is so easy to know. but to accept it and to integrate that acceptance by responding with compassion rather than shame, to oneself, to the other, to the collective, that is entirely different. 

these notions move all ways as conditions and particularities and situations personal and systemic shift and sprout out of the ground of historical context. these notions applied to acts of violence in all the ways one can be violent, to all the people who can be imposed upon, are not simple. turn the other cheek, stay silent, shrug and say "that is life" are not recommended and to reduce the sentiment of compassion to such singular answers is to participate in the lack of nuance that is a particular affliction of the twenty-first century. this all gets very close to cancel culture. to the questions of what to do with aimless violence if not punish and imprison. to the questions of how to structure authority in a truly globalized globe. 

who decides who is in and who is out?

taboo has something to do with the phenomenon of extremes. how things that are opposite can be so far from the center that they meet one another and potentially merge. this is very clearly observed in the twentieth century enactments of dictators of both fascist and the communist "ideology." observed in the twenty-first century in the bipartisan american political theater of republicans capitalists and democratic capitalists. though it is weird because capitalism itself is so laden with the weight of all the self-awarded medals for extremes of so many performances, it does not exactly seem to have an opposite, it more seems like the metal center that attracts and repels various forms of extreme. maybe, i will have to think about that one more, later. but taboo. taboo is a label for that which is so counter to notions of self, of what it means to be and function as a human among other humans in relationship to the world outside of our rules but of which all of them are formed. where the atom splits then meets is one prong animal, one prong god. this requires the influence of separation and if not hierarchy than a sort of disregard for the intelligence of animals, microscopic organisms, and the "inanimate" matter of the earth, as well as for the dogma that god is not within but remains an objective entity who may be reached only by some and only by some means. neither of which i prescribe to but both of which have existed in so many iterations, in so many forms, for so many reasons through human logical, psychological, biological, and socio-relational evolution. 

so in taboo there is the act so inhuman it is animal and the act so inhuman it is god. 

taboo in material ways is often related to filth. to decay and rot and waste. there is a scientific learning, by that i mean broad multifaceted was of comprehending the actual, functional, processes of nature and tangible reality, and a spiritual intuition to understanding that matter from which the energetic properties, the life, has been absorbed or released must go through a process of disintegration and reintegration into the whole so that it may be dispersed and reused and participate in life once again. and understanding that the process takes time, that it will happen without help, that there is nothing to be gleaned from it and, actually, without space it can cause harm amidst the spaces where life and living are conducted. human bodies are porous and what is released in the process of decay, as matter breaks down into its smallest parts, is, its smallest parts. some of which are perfectly cable and excited to pass through an orifice and go exploring or take up residence in a living body. death, decay, rot. they are an aversion to the senses. particularly smell and sight. 

capitalism is petty, it will give nothing without needing something in return. it feels no obligation to embody, as in to put into action, its morals but complete obligation to shout about them and reduce others for not doing so. and it has reared and conditioned a petty society. pettiness, just as all other attributes, is human. a go-to insult, declaration, naming for when people want to push someone to the edge of humanity because their actions have decidedly already located them their on the GPS of society is "trash." to be not animal not god but to be the refuse. the discarded. the useless stinking slimy unclean excess. and calling someone trash is petty because it is easy and legible. 

that word, excess, is what got me thinking of all this. i do not really keep up with the specifics of who did what in washington. they all act foolish. they all spend their time looking in the mirror and twittering and scrolling facebook and checking their bank accounts and watching reality tv. truly. like all americans. so i really do not take note of specifics because i do not need specifics, to observe that most are not invested in nor capable of doing anything productive, one way or another, for this structure we call society this place we call a nation. but there is a republican us representative who showed up to the soundstage of capital hill for the latest episode of "the state of the union" wearing all white, with a huge fur collar. and she shouted at the man who is apparently the president but who knows but also actually really embodies a truth about what an absolute lie all notions of being "the president" really are. 

and listen. this woman. i do know, regardless of her petty antics, is very professionally invested in maintaining what still stands of old dichotomies of right / wrong, good/ bad and in the regression of any growth that has happened around such restrictive and putative laws / standards / beliefs. while i do not know what she says at her own kitchen table, she is willing to show up publicly as in the continued suppression of self expression through any gender, subjugation of black and brown working class and poor people, the freedom to love and fuck whoever one chooses, and the withholding of resources which make life live-able, bearable, and enjoyable. making money and garnering a kind of fame off of the taboo. the entire identity and notion of america only exists because of the taboo. 

she makes choices. she chooses to not have compassion. she chooses action and language of violence. 

i am watching myself get bound up in this fear. fear that i am defending someone indefensible. that someone will come along and read this as sympathy, some kind of call for compassion. so this retractive tentative longwinded winding mumbling censored pie is being prepared in front of me, as if i blacked out while baking.

when i was probably thirteen, fourteen, fifteen? (i always wonder if writers really have an uncanny knack for remembering their age in certain memories or if they just go with what seems correct and say it confidently because, who else is going to say it?) i was making a boxed chocolate cake, i did not do much independently in the kitchen as a youth but i was really excited to make this cake, and i walked away for a minute and then returned and finished up the batter and put it in the oven and waited thirty then forty then fifty then sixty minutes for it to bake. i pulled it out and it was essentially still liquid. i was so confused. my dad came into the kitchen to check on the cake and after some questions and wondering it was revealed that while i had walked away from the kitchen he had come in and added the water for the recipe and when i returned he was no longer around nor did he leave a note, or say anything as i walked past him watching tv in the living room, about having added the water. i am not sure if i proceeded to also add the water to the already wet mix or if he did, either possibility is equally as strange because you would think someone would have been like this batter looks pretty wet already. sincerely to this day i cannot figure out if he blacked out or if he was mad at me and sabotaged the cake. blacking out seems unlikely because he seemed fully conscious two minutes later. sabotage seems unlikely only because he would have gotten to eat cake, too.

trying to write, to myself even but especially to anything with even an unlikely but potential audience especially on the internet, i often find myself with a liquid chocolate cake, only i am the one who poured both cups of water into the batter, and i kind of did it knowingly. out of a lack of confidence that one cup is enough. 

like it is not about her. maybe that is the problem. this whole thing got me going because i saw her in her all white with her blonde white hair all dressed up like her white veneers. and she stood out. and she was shouting. and this person i follow who makes entertaining, funny content about the ridiculousness of our current world posted the videos of her and all these tweets imbedded, which are not all the tweets in the world or all the comments in the world, which are biased to the person behind the account pasting pieces of the internet together. but they were all calling her trash. and it just got me thinking. not about her. not about her deserving it. deserving is punishing and deserving is about withholding humanity. it just got me thinking about how everyone hates the excess. the woman performing a character showing up to the theater to participate in the play. there is a script and a set and everything. and in that rendition she is a character who does not blend in to the ensemble instead she plays the antagonist taking style notes from cruella deville and the drag queens she is so afraid to hear read a children's book. 

and so the trumpets of judgement are sounded. her clothes are excessive. her voice is excessive. her excess is excessive. and if she wants to act like an animal she can be disposed of like an animal; because animals, along with plants, natural materials and people too, are disposable in this court. and the men love to say it. the woman is excess. weight. waste. 

and here is where the extremes meet. the woman speaks violence against the people she places society's ills on, for their breaking of the standards set forth by Puritanism and capitalism and racism, for those who trespass against the US. if they want to transgress her taboos, to exist on the other side of them, they can be treated as less than human; denied their rights and freedoms and privileges. when we say those american words i think we really mean to say physical and emotional space both to only exist and to expand, personal autonomy in making choice and making culture in regard to individual and shared values and actions, privacy to be without being monitored, expression in idea spirit and body, and access to the material and immaterial necessities of living a healthy, comfortable, safe, enjoyed life. she keeps her creativity to imagine possibility and her capacity to accept creativity limited, held tight inside the wall. 

and then she herself transgresses, trapse across the bounds of civility. 

decorum is the mask of the ensemble. it does not speak. the very nature of it is to be known and unspoken, especially by people who keep their lives or limbs or homes or jobs or children or sanity or ability to move through the world by knowing just how to contort those movements in regard for the invisible rules. unlike the tall stone walls of taboos surrounding identity and class and race and sex and gender, that just merely have to be pulled down or blown up or drilled through but are legible, those of decorum are an underground electric fence. the existence of it, as a physical barrier, as a concept even there at all, cannot be observed unless one knows it is there. and while there may be signs for the hyper-vigilant, highly suspicious, heavily experienced - little markers stuck in or charred remains atop the ground - it is more likely that one learns of its existence through transgression. and like the dog it is supposed to keep in or the thief it is supposed to keep out, the interloper is likely to remember the edge of the yard and stay far from that fry line. the rules of the fence are imbedded into the facade of reality in a way the wire is in the ground, the effects of its violence scar beneath the surface too, felt, deep in the tissue, in the heart, in the blood, where no one has to see them and where you cannot show proof. 

and listen. this woman. she has put this mask on atop the white one she cannot take off more times than she has put on the white felt white fur collared coat. decorum is not liberalism. it is whiteness. this duality of violence of inside and outside and how to act and present and not to present, they are the same. its like maybe the electric fence is under or right outside the castle or something like. things are not perfect translations. * and here i find myself flippantly arguing for the use of loose metaphor where in the future of this writing i will indeed argue for specificity of reality over the self indulgence of poetics and turn twist of phrase. so do i want to suck all the sappy fun out of language or not? * the only thing they are really is themselves and both and all of it are the same as what is well known as the overt violence of the southern racism and covert violence of the northern racism. 

but she has also been shaped by it because this country still freaks the fuck out about women. this society will find any clinically acute or wildly abstract reason to dislike, you mean hate, a woman. we will take him over her because well, we just don't like her. we don't exactly like him, we would not let our teenage daughters be alone in a room with him but you don't have to like men. it is her tone, the way she holds her shoulders, she didn't look me in the eye well not me i haven't met her but the camera, she looked me too directly in the eye well not me i haven't met her but the men on stage with her who would not let her finish a sentence so i am not totally sure what she even was going to say but i know it was something shrill or emotional or obnoxious or conniving. that color was hideous. that coat was ridiculous. why is she fat. why is she boring. why is she wrinkled? why is she there, or here. can someone get rid of her? 

in group think it is the group who is emotionally attached and emotionally charged about the women deemed too emotional or too emotionally unavailable. 

these women mentioned are easy and available to be examples, they are very famous and they are political and they are white and the are heterosexual by all accounts. and also they have chosen to participate in the very direct building of society. but they are also examples because as few of them there are, there are even fewer who come from father out on the margins, bringing their broader perspectives and more dynamic experiences. so it is not a lament for them, blonde marj and blonde hill, who reap the wheat of white supremacist society, eating enough of the nutrients of the grain to survive but not so much to rise, to the tip top. when they are hungry in the day are given the shaft to chew on. the flavor is enough to satiate, to remember the taste for later, to mask the bitter truth that someone is rationing you, too.  because in this duality of supremacy and capital which necessitate one another, the logic is there is not enough to go around. only exactness gets full access but keep your likenesses close, coerce them to fuck and invite them to eat. and in these grand bed and dining rooms, where the wheat is served, there are so many places for the women hide: behind heavy drapes and tropical trees and statues of gold and vases of porcelain, all imported. they can say i am not sure how i got here but it is comfortable.

maybe it sounds blame-y. maybe it is. why shouldn't it be? to get that high up, scraping the sky, and have no honesty with yourself about how you really arrived? that you really go there by elevator and not stairs. even though the elevator might have stopped on every floor on the way up, you would remember the stairs. 

it is so easy to feel morally superior from atop the wall and it is easy to feel it from inside your little electrified fence. both are places of safety. and if you are not allowed in one it is easy to rush to find protection in the other. but what resides on either side is only others seeking protection, looking for a leader, relinquishing personal discernment and self control, convincing themselves that their new way is not actually the exact same way as the way across the way. where the lady in white who stands on top of the wall and hurls rocks down and keeps people out of the abundance behind it and and who also gets phone calls up there zapped in from the electrified line, promising rape and deeming her a bitch and laughing about disposing of her. 

war tactics are war tactics. violence is violence.

and so i am interested in who and what is and wants to migrate to or remain in the field in between and all the land and water and air around and away from. where at least dogs can run free and maybe there are thieves but nothing is locked up so everything is kind of up for grabs or to share. where perhaps we do not have to love or respect or befriend or understand or pay any mind to or listen to either side. it feels old to believe that sides made up by a few must be taken up by all. that you have to betray yourself or stunt yourself in one or the others mechanisms of attack just to feel like you are participating, that you too have power. even if it is just lobbing language. 

be selfish. know that what each person puts out, while maybe it hits or hurts a target they likely do not even feel the arrow or rock (depending on fence or wall,) because the internet is huge and chaotic. what each person puts out is our own responsibility. and it has resonance. and where we put our attention or energy is an act of giving a piece of our life (the pieces that are measured in time which as a matter of law of reality, is limited) our opportunity to shape ourselves and thus our world. and it as moments all compounded with all the other moments in yours and any and every other persons moments are all that all of this is made of. they are the literal atoms of reality. and the kind of gratification can serve a satisfaction that fills the void of existence even momentarily enough to make continuing bearable because the need for that gratification comes from the fear of being unmoored, of having nothing to grab on to, of loosing the connection between your self and your body your self and your daily life your self and the world around you, that gratification can keep someone going but there is no balance. the depression from depletion and the high from the fulfillment leave no space for knowing much else.

a replication of the structure and methods and threats and motives of respectability politics which is saying how to be in public -which has a very real framework - is not what i am sifting through all this sand looking for. so much of the expectation is about suppressing an engagement with emotions as they are felt and the acceptance of letting ones emotions turn rot inside, and all the toxic buildup it creates as fumes of resentment and self pity - both such human things but who needs them shaping the world. it is something you learn when you read history, how personal all these grand acts of persecution and invasion and violence have been. personal turned political. 

but what if they were honest or able to cry or seek reason that comes only through understanding when someone has shared something vulnerable. from the softest spot in their soul some hope for a world without all this conflict. so this is not to say not to give into the impulse of anger or melt into sadness when the world keeps being itself and people keep wanting power who only use it to limit others and be loud and hollow. it is just about figuring out how to say what one means, actually. not to take the simple spoonful of sugar or coke or whatever floats your boat quip, the one that when observed for what it means because it is what it says, not through the fickle and subjective. 

all too often irony and sarcasm act as poor civil engineering. stuck in a car on a road, taking all this extra effort, and not even the scenic route, to get somewhere that is not two feet beyond a fence or metal barrier or median your car cannot traverse. america runs on irony. what do the words we say mean on their face. to their root. metaphor is great but it is the slip slide slope to false equivalency. do you mean trash like what let her get crunched up in the back of one of those seeping green trucks? if that is what is meant then okay, but at least reckon with it as what you mean. if its throw her out of congress like you would throw out your bag of trash to the curb on sunday then okay but like that is a whole other intention with a whole other series of steps and honestly if you take that route she will not end up on her ass on a curb; she will go home to her nice house and dog or whatever and keep being a white lady in america with some businessman husband. 

maybe the group mind lets go of the fixation on her and on the trash unless it is us, someone, talking about all of the millions of pounds of non-compostable non biodegradable trash produced by all of us daily. then maybe lets talk about the trash. otherwise the label does nothing about the government issue(sss) and nothing about the environment isues(sss.) it is really easy to say flippant things and that release makes one think we are aligned with our sense of values. when really there has been no proposal for actual remedies, solutions, or even a suggestion of a way to gather and just talk. 

i want to be floating in the void, in the water and the space where people have not made up their minds out of insecurity. have not tethered themselves to our current single issue voting stance of "the lesser of two evils." who are unwilling to settle and are willing to be shapeless in a shapeless world, confused and searching in a confused and searching world, rather than sheltered in the confines of false certainty. that is always the space where the artists and the believers and the radicals and the liberators stay. it certainly has physical risks. the mental strength it teaches and requires takes practice. but the spiritual risks of ambivalence and false pretense are for the extremes. 

dreams come forth require an initial boundlessness gradually honed in to the physical realities of the planet at that time while continuing to be open to their expansion and change, too. it requires wisdom to decipher what is a construction of reality and what belongs to the realm and power of a nature, planet bound and beyond, that is greater a scale than humans are able to perceive in the entire. so it requires a deference and love and respect for something greater inside and outside of you and of me and of everyone. even the people who spend their lives denying it. to be dedicated enough to vision yet manifest, imagination yet articulated is the only way to bring it forth from the ether. 

in astrological terms :

this last sentiment is what saturn in pisces will be asking of us.