⛆ Odd Man Out ⛆
Watching films with a friend, I'd always find myself hoping movies would take a spiritual or religious turn (that usually doesn't come). "It's not that kind of film" my friend would say, as I would nonetheless try to find a spiritual reading of a movie. I just couldn't help myself filtering everything through that mirror. So, this last winter I was very excited when, about halfway through seeing Odd Man Out, the film suddenly found itself in a church.
Why didn't I listen to you Father. I repeated the words without thinking what they meant and then drowned them out with my shouting. I didn't hear you. I wanted to bare my heart and I found new linens to obscure it in. I must confess, I rest in my selfishness
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
I've remained subconsciously latched to blind belief in authority from childhood. When I run up against realities of their fallibility and wide variance I don't know what to do. I free myself from responsibility for authority. I don't have beliefs, I have wanting to appease everyone. I'd rather never be seen so I might not ever intrude. I can't know everything.
I continue doing this, even here using the testament as authority for how to live even with the cognitive dissonance of simultaneously rejecting it and accepting it. My wanting some kind of cultural role to fill that feels like it fits so as to not disappoint anyone. I'm still driven by fear. I find little things that resonate with a part of me and I search for a cultural context ritual where I can do it for myself, but I can't know what I want without seeing it in a cultural context already.
13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
I've sought the depths and heights of knowledge, I haven't come close to them, and have come away with no desire to go further. I've enough. No more curiosity. There's infinite in every direction and still no use, vanity of vanities, all is useless. I've read books and taken in art that have enriched my life and deepend my world, but for what? To what end? Why does it matter, what's really different? To read another dense book, to rigoursly exercise, to learn and play a musical instrument, they may be feasts rather than snacks, but they are just entertainments that last longer. If you have a stable life and no worries and leisure, doesn't Ecclesiastes say to enjoy the celebration, and the work?- whatever is our lot in life, same as Gilgamesh.
Why should I go back out to walk? I've walked hundreds of miles. I'm not going to find anything out there. I've gotten glimpses and sought them deeply. I've reached a spiritual end. What else is there? It just is. What wisdom do I need to live for life? You can play any note next, it'll all be music.
I'm worried I've been analogizing music to my life in ways it does not fit. It took me years to understand my music taste (what was consistently a song I'd call my 'favorite' of such power over me could be painful to listen to, or just nothing if I was not in the mood (and mood not as exciting or relaxed or so on, it is very ephemeral and unique to specific music) and I had to learn to listen to my body for what music it wanted to hear). I took that understanding into other areas, like only eating when I was hungry (and listening to my body for what I wanted to eat) and when I wanted to sleep (leading to my very strange, shifting sleep schedule relative to daylight but that led to such good sleep). I'd sit quietly until something came over me strongly like a desire for rice and i'd cook it and eat it and it would taste amazing, then i would eat it the next day and it would be nothing. I would suddenly feel a sense of needing to go out on a walk and it would fit and i'd walk for hours, then the next night i'd go out as some kind of routine feeling that i 'should' and come in after a few minutes because it didn't feel right. Does this natural way, that has aided me so much in being able to understand leisure, has it made it difficult to fit into a world after the agricultural revolution? One with crops to be tilled at intervals on schedules rather than the play of hunter-gatherers?
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
I infer by feelings of shame and pity and so on that I should be giving everything I have to those suffering. I drain my checking account for those in tent hospitals and what starts as emotional ends as indifferent so that I can forget that there is always more. The feelings drive me to find a way to not give myself to sainthood. I can't actually help and if I did I'd only be doing it for selfish reasons - to soothe my own guilt, not to help. I resolve it's only natural to be self preserving. I decide that saints destroy themselves in their extremity and I do nothing at all. And so, I rest in my selfishness.
I must repeat for myself. And in what I use for this cultural context, if I do not have Tolstoy's Agape for god then to give myself over to charity (charity) does not matter and indeed is done for the wrong reasons. But if I do it from an inner sense of preference for health for all conscious beings then I have to construct a feeling of human selfishness to free me from the guilt of doing anything but giving all of myself to those who need it more - so I find myself seeking ignorance, wrapping my head in heavy linens.
That's why I'm selfish! Because it's always what will hurt me immediately and devastatingly like sleep deprivation, hunger, thirst, heat, disease or poverty when in viscerally aware of it. I do not act unless I myself am suffering. I rest in my selfishness.
I feel utterly alone and loveless and incapable in both directions. I have not love but fear, fear and fear and pleasingness. I have no love that could go beyond and on. I have things that hold onto me like chains that cover me in barricades that only allow me to walk in one way. But i do not love, i am not carried by myself. Agape does not find me in activity. Since I was a child, I've waited for a feeling of active love to surge in me so I would not have to fear the sin of saying good night with a false tongue. For my family, for a friend, for romance, but it never came until she was dead. Only in loss, in grief, could I feel a longing, a desire for love. And the active love still doesn't come and I feel subhuman. And i have it so relatively easy compared to the extremity of people suffering as societal outcasts. People who have been destroyed by this infernal earth and need to feel love most of all crushed under foot, the loam and the silt.
Yet perhaps i do feel it as defined as longing. When I have been away from them for long enough, I really desire to be with them again. Being with them can sometimes be a comfort in the way I've envisioned true love without eros. It's just that often I'm not in comfort with them. I can't find myself in longing or comfort with them outside of necessity. I feel shameful for this. I repeat and repeat, do I not want to with those specific people or because I don't think me (as an object) should be touched? Have I never been comfortable with them or have I never been comfortable with myself? Is there a difference? Is there a line?
When I couldn't say goodnight honestly, I thought I could at least feel I knew an inanimate love with a piece of music that had possessed me for years. It left me eventually. It scared me that all encompassing, eternal, unconditional love wasn't there when even art could drift apart like friends. Yet there is at least one person I've still held it for, and our relationship has changed as we have and the love often isn't active but a phileo of true trust and comfort. So I have a real experience under the love umbrella but I feel I have no Agape because I listen to my body and I am selfish. When I look at the world it fills me with sorrow. All life is subject to terror. A saint would be driven by their Agape. If I look, I am overwhelmed by my powerlessness, and if I look at small things I can help, I look away. I rest in my selfishness. And so I remain on the run. If I release myself from the responsibility of judgment, I need only worry of being faced with my ethics, intentional or accidental, if it catches up to me on a cold night in Belfast. Is it far?