Words Redux

Words redux 

Warning: Stop reading if your heart is weak and your soul is feeble. My words are meant to stop your heart and to disturb your soul. On the other hand, an old ugly, short, poor, crass, and crude vixen and virago of Jewish descent once accused me of lacking empathy solely on the basis of the tone and tenor of my words. I retorted that she was the last person on this planet I would want to hear a lecture about empathy. Empathy is not emotional incontinence. I do have the power of the imagination to conjure up a world outside of my experience and to map that understanding onto what I write. The following were my notes as I was drifting about in Eastern Caribbean in less than perfect weather. Some of them were rehashed of what I wrote earlier.

Often when I write, a warning from Mark Twain rings in my ears. " Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted. Persons attempting to find a moral in it will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." I write because I like to see my brain struggle with symbols called words, to negotiate a world full of ignoramuses and hypocrites, and to counterbalance the pain of mental anguish with the balm of humor. That's what I pompously and ponderously trying to tell myself and others.

Even though I have never actually seen wind, I know it is there because I see its impact, the consequences of its unseen hand. Wind is the movement of two different air pressure systems. Nature hates unbalance. It strives for equilibrium. Chemical reactions are just the process of reaching equilibrium. Orgasm is a chemical reaction of another name. The serenity you achieve after reaching orgasm is equilibrium achieved. 

Although nobody has seen a fundamental particle with naked eyes,  particle physicists have faith in its existence. They believe in what they see in the aftermath of the chemical reactions. Actually, it boggles the mind to see how certain individuals can go that far in trying to understand the physical composition of the elements and to probe into the interaction of the elements under certain conditions. Thanks to these individuals, the human race collectively makes progress and achieves some mastery over the physical environment. On the other hand, some humans are so hampered by the poverty of their imagination and the paucity of their mental prowess as well as by the inferiority complex of their very being that they flail and flop around in their miserable existence  while waiting for death to arrive and put a merciful end to their useless lives. Meanwhile they take desperate, pot shots at those who manage to bring affronts to their perceived possession of dignity and worth, but they must have known deep in their hearts they have neither dignity nor worth, for they are humans only in name, and not in sensibilities or accomplishments for their lives are identical to those of animals: crass, crude, selfish, and utterly meaningless. I have a deep fear to be like them. This fear has caused me to try my best to reach for higher ground of morality and love and responsibility. I have been ridiculed and laughed by them as being stupid, naive, foolish, and grandiose, but the fear has helped me hold my head high and look at myself in the mirror without a shudder of shame---well, not too much a shudder anyway.

Ever since I joined a certain forum and have been exposed to the infantile mode of reasoning of several supposedly "educated" and intelligent individuals there, I was perplexed as to why such an unexpected behavior could happen. I thought educated people would display rationality when it comes to reasoning, but over and over again I witnessed a blatant disregard for facts, truths, and logic. My bewilderment was alleviated by a recent reading of an article in Newsweek magazine, Aug. 16, 2010, p. 24, where Sharon Begley showed why evolution may favor irrationality and why flaws of reasoning are ploys to be persuasive and win arguments, though not to truths. 

Those individuals who resort to confirmation bias, are blind to counterexamples, and fall short of logic, naturally provoke contempt from me. I can't help it. To me, they are emotional cowards who can't face truths and logic. To me, they exemplify the limits of education and of reason itself. Some humans are simply not fit to call themselves humans. In them, the animal heritage is too overwhelming, especially if they are also selfish. In fact, selfishness is what drives them to such poor attempts at reasoning because they try to justify their selfish behavior and their lies. One does not argue well from positions of weakness. In the end, truths and logic always win out.

Take the emotional subject of romantic love, for instance. I take a position that if certain women don't love  me because they don't know my  worth or they do, but think my worth is not worth much. Of course, we can throw in other relevant factors such as incompatibility (personality, caste, and socioeconomic variables) and lack of sexual attractiveness. Faced with such rejection, a rational response for me  is to walk away in silence and without rancor and bitterness, and to keep looking for other women who will find me desirable. If I cannot find any, I will have to accept reality for what it is and should not feel bad about myself, because after all, searching for a loving mate is a hit-and-miss affair. Many marriages are built on desperation and laziness in the search rather than true love. If I don't behave rationally when I encounter cases of rejection, I just degrade and debase myself. In other hands, if I fling hurtful words of wild accusation and sarcasm prior to slinking away, I just confirm further my worthlessness in the eyes of those who rejected me. That sounds banal and sensible enough, but very few people behave this way. Very often when we love somebody, we want---sometimes desperately---them to love us back. When that does not happen, we get sad then mad. We want to inflict pain on those who rejected us and caused us pain. That is not love; that is animalistic revenge. Some, if not most, humans fail to transcend their animal heritage.

I treasure authenticity more than others. To me, authenticity is a step along the way to qualities far more spacious, daring, and mysterious that existed before us and will exist after us. Of course, it goes without saying that authenticity has to be moderated with kindness, otherwise it is just an excuse for cruelty. 

There is a hint and a flavor, and in some an odor, of paradox and irony in all of us. For a guy who is obsessed with death--a violent kind, I fantasize that I have some artistic sensibilities. For those who don't know, an exploration of art is a way of appreciating life. By instinct, I value and respect artists far more than merchants and politicians because the former are rarer and far more exquisite and tend to be fragile while the latter are too down to earth and crass and crude and power-hungry. We all want to be rich and powerful, but only a few of us think we are capable of artistic creation. As I drift in the Eastern Caribbean with my family for a week, I have been blissfully entertained by the singing duo of an Asian couple of Filipino descent. He plays the synthesizer and sings while she only sings. His singing is good, but the lady's voice reminds me of Karen Carpenter. For three nights now, as I pass them on the way to the dining room and back to my cabin when the dinner is over, the music they play and the songs she sings have brought me peace and rapture and a recognition of the power of music in influencing moods. I admire her greatly for imitating Karen Carpenter's voice so perfectly. It makes me feel that Karen is still alive and I am still a young man in late 1970's and early 1980's. 

Today, the shipped docked in Nassau. I walked back from the Cabbage Beach to the ship, a distance of 12 kilometers, a bit over 7 miles, with a  flip-flop on my feet and a bag full of books and beach towel on my back. I walked slowly and was in touch with the locomotion of my aging body. I took in the air, the sun, the poverty of the local residents who are descendants of black slaves. I passed through shacks with garbage strewn in the yard, an unkempt cemetery with graves partially  broken up--stone crucifixes lying on the ground, and a pier lined up with stalls selling conch shells. I was quite surprised to see many female black cops. I was also taken aback by the accent of the residents, which is more American than British, and very different from that of the Jamaicans. Walking is very natural to me. I don't mind walking for hours if I have sufficient water. My father once walked for over 1,000 kilometers to visit his married elder sister. He did that in his mid 20s, sort of wanting to kill himself as he had no money on him. He begged for food along the way and slept wherever he could find a place to lie down. He told me fascinating stories about his encounters with the Montagnards who gave him gigantic corns to eat and how naked female Montagnards took a bath in the streams. By the time he met his sister, she barely recognized him. He promptly got sick and his sister had to nurse him back to health. I wonder if I inherited some of his death wish. Talking about my father inspired me of the following:

We didn't get much money, but plenty of rain.

I grew up in a large family,
Eight surviving kids, and one breadwinner.
Dad worked his ass off. 
Too many mouths to feed and clothe.
Surprising that I had any education at all.
Mealtime was a very short-rime affair.
"Time to eat", shouted my Mom. 
We all gathered quickly at a very long table.
A massive cooked rice container at the end.
Four skimpy plates of fish or meat, all very salty. 
Four bowls of soup.
In less than 5 minutes, fish or meat, and soup were gone.
All was left was the rice. 
We ate it with fish sauce.
I was always hungry as a kid.
I never ate to my heart's content until I grew up and had a decent job.
To this day, I still eat very quickly.
Habits die hard. 
We didn't get much money, but plenty of rain.
I slept in the attic. 
The roof leaked and nobody bothered to fix it.
When the monsoon season arrived, I put the bucket close to where I slept.
Sometimes, it rained a long time, and the bucket overflowed.
I often dream, even now, the termites-infested house collapsing from the rain. 
I dream of lying in the rain, in the middle of a field, wet and cold.
Now I am dry and warm at night,
But I would trade all I have for
Being back with my parents and siblings
In a house full of rain.
I'm eating fancy food everyday on this cruise.
And every time I look at my son at mealtime,
I remember my parents and siblings
sitting at that long table a long, long time ago. 

Wissai
Dec. 5-12, 2010