A reading from Stigma

At about 3 in the morning last night I decided that the beer wasn't cutting it, nor was the internet comradery. I turned to books. I dug into my social theory texts. The first I picked up was Bourdieu's 'The logic of practice" and began reading chapter 3. I'll summarize. What he advocates very efficiently is that practice is a 'ground-level' knowledge that doesn't presume, in the abstract, what objects in our social field mean. Rather, practice is much more situated in a sequence of action and meaning formation. He's getting at what Burke would call the action that occurred before we formulated our motive for it. It's a rather keen insight.

Then I turned to Erving Goffman's "Stigma," which details the process of social marginalization. His point is that we form a repertoire of 'types' in which we place people. Some don't fit and are deviant in specific ways, which lead them to be stigmatized. At about this time, my neighbors came home bringing two into tow: one man, one woman. I know both. I fought with the man over the woman, briefly. I fought with my neighbors over the woman, briefly. They were preparing for a sex party.

Play the video and read this excerpt. This was my uncanny moment at about 4:30 a.m. December 24, 2009.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts--

I am sixteen years old now and I don't know what to do and would appreciate it if you could tell me what to do. When I was a little girl it was not so bad because I got used to the kids on the block makeing fun of me, but now I would like to have boy friends like the other girls and go out on Saturday nites, but no boy will take me because I was born without a nose--although I am a good dancer and have a nice shape and my father buys me pretty clothes.

I sit and look at myself all day and cry. I have a big hole in the middle of my face that scares people even myself so I can't blame the boys for not wanting to take me out. My mother loves me, but she crys terrible when she looks at me.

What did I do to deserve such a terrible bad fate? Even if I did do some bad things I didn't do any before I was a year old and I was born this way. I asked Papa and he says he doesn't know, but that maybe I did something in the other world before I was born or that maybe I was being punished for his sins. I don't believe that because he is a very nice man. Ought I commit suicide?

Sincerely yours,
Desperate

As I read this passage over and over, and paged through the book to some of the more distressing parts, the continual shifting of clothing, sheets, and bodies on the floor above me gave way to the occasional moan. That was my manna floating down, the food that fed a lack that grows larger and stronger by the day. You see, I was born with a hole in my self. On nights like this I am the abyss.

am I programmed to kill myself?

Somewhere along the line from egocentric prepubescent self to my current fading manifestation of manhood I became keenly acquainted with my negation. Everything I touched challenged my existence. Voices shook me from numerous slumbers from which I dreamed of a me who was free. A game of accumulation is what I call capitalism. From the fractionated aura of the thing itself we're sold it's slowly fading embers in the form of numerous sugar coated, machine pressed, polymer extruded, disinfected, carefully-labeled and tracked stuff. This stuff is never enough.

We live in a world saturated with suggestions. They seep through anywhere there's a gap in meaning. I've dammed the flow of suggestions. I got rid of television. Now I am beginning to see through the cracks. Many strange creatures dwell in these cracks.

It started with a moment from my childhood at my grandparents' house during an afternoon lunch. Everything was routine, and everyone was enjoying their dinner. I pulled myself back from the plate of food and the ritual of eating to witness everyone at the table, completely oblivious to me, eating. My grandfather in particular was oblivious to the rest of the table as he ate. He would cover his forehead with his free hand and use the other to shovel food into a mouth situated hovering lips-down over the plate. My grandmother, stricken by blindness since she was a child, only looks ahead and off to the side. Her gaze is peculiar. The turrets are unmanned so to speak. She looks ahead and carefully uses her fork to position food close to a piece of toast that's in the other hand. As she gets the two near, her head, still looking forward, leans down with her mouth open. Her countenance is much more of a crane's shovel being guided from numerous sources, numerous viewpoints. The hands bark orders, the inner ear barks another, and my grandmother moves her head into position. Her lips feel out in front of her. Bingo.

Then there's my brother. This is the scene that marvels me the most. He's eating, not paying attention to anyone, and he's out of character. Instead of being yelled at, continuously throughout the day, he's eating quietly. He's minding his manners, and he's eating everything on his plate. We all are. I paused briefly to take note of this ritual, and I am forever destined to test this view out again and again. I do it at least two more times at the same afternoon lunch and receive the same results. It was a strange ripping of oneself from the context, but it was hard after that to put me back. I was outside of context.

Being in this hinterland between role and reason, I found a self that was attuned to this environment. I enjoyed being the non-entity, the eyes without a body. I took perverse enjoyment in watching but hardly in being watched. The names given me and my body had alien meaning. Either I didn't fulfill the meaning or it didn't speak to me at all. Gaps appeared between symbol and matter. For a boy raised to address himself through symbol this was a tough place to be. A no man's land, an interstitial space between things. I should have played sports.

With nothing holding me up I'm a raw entity. Small signs spark me to life: a kind smile or compliment swell me up instantly. In the absence of meaning for myself, these events spark like wildfire inside me. I come to life, effervescent with with a joy I rarely feel. But I'm still driven by the alienation. I desire to put the signifier in my mouth, to encompass it and become it.

I sit and I ponder this and I wonder if, perhaps, my life is one programmed out of the incidental features of our common language. That a person would systematically glom onto some words and meanings and not others suggests that an agency is at work. Yet the closer one approaches contexts where words and meaning are batted about, the words and meanings reveal their patina of usage. It structures our activities and provides us with subjectivities, some that make us more comfortable than others. I desire to be known, to be seen, to reappear every so often, but I can't dignify myself to do it for me. I don't trust my opinion on the matter. I need advice from the outside.

I am raw and meaningless, but I seek out meaning for me in others' kind voices. I retreat when those same voices turn viscious and hurtful. I just want the message. I am growing weary of the continual vacillation of life-meaning. Someone give me the sign. Put me in coach. I'm your tool. Steer me toward your glory or my destruction. I'm ready to make real meaning, the meaning that only a lifeless body could prove. I just don't have a reason at the moment.

I suppose there are others out there like me. The young adult whose life lacks purpose, whose life has no meaning, who awaits a sign. We're all out there looking for a sign. When some receive it they step into the crowd and detonate themselves. It's kill or be killed. This emptiness gnaws at me. I take comfort in the fact that we're all inside of nothing. It's the limit condition for everything.

i'm not here

The walls close in on me at times. Right now they are. I moved. I lost weight. I lost my appetite on the way to losing it. I can't eat. It's a control thing, this weight issue. I need control. To do so, I consume the nothing. I'm not here. This is what I tell myself. I'm nothing. I leave no trace. My objects look untouched, absent of my trace. I'm not here. I don't exist. It's my only safe place, where I don't exist. Look in my door. What do you see? A potted plant, a light, and shadows, but not me. You see light. You see structure. You see the insides of a lighted building that looks closed, no vacancy. That's me. I'm in there. I'm not eating. I'm chewing on my skin, chewing on my teeth, chewing on my pride, but I'm not here. I want the world to not exist when I consider myself. The world is hard to disappear, but I am not. I erase myself. I'm not here. I hear noises. They resonate off the walls. My room is underneath the stairwell to the adjacent apartment. The staccato-cadence of people walking down the stairs. A door squeaks and a dull thud resonates through the floor. The place becomes eerily still. I dissipate through the building, leak through the cracks. I am a mist and all is still around me, and I am not 'here.'

Dream: 1/15/08

I took a nap this afternoon at about 3:00 and awoke with teeth clenched from a very vivid dream at about 5:04.

The dream was autobiographical. I was in my hometown, riding my bicycle to a local university, SIUE to work on my dissertation there. I was humming in my head and aloud that I was engaged in an affirming activity of finding a public place to work on this paper and that I was, in fact, going through the motions of finding a place to write. I was humming this as I arrived at what looked to be the library. I opened the door and was flanked by books in a dimly lit building. Along several walls were lit reading rooms where college students were engaged in reading stories to children. As I walked around the book stacks I noticed that all of them were children’s books. I was in the children’s library. I exited and in the hallway were two study carrels at which two students were reading. One student made eye contact and I kneeled down and told him my predicament.

“I went inside there and all I saw were children’s books. Do you know where the college library is?”

“Yes, the library you want is downstairs.” He pointed down the hall toward the stair well.

“Ok, thank you sir.”

In my mind this was a very affirming conversation. We were very attuned to the moment. I wasn’t bothering him. He was happy to oblige my request for information. All was good at that moment. I began my descent and turned a corner in the well to the next floor below. That’s where I saw a man with a gray plastic tub walk past. In it was a dead gray rhesus monkey splayed out like a drunken man in a wheel barrow with his arms and legs draped over the sides. The monkey’s eyes were closed and it was perched atop numerous body parts of monkeys. I caught briefly an eye as the man carrying this tub passed and continued down a very cramped corridor and out of sight. I turned and looked around. This floor was also dimly lit except for the light from offices and rooms that were occupied. This place was alive with the conversation of researchers. I looked into one room and there was another rhesus monkey strapped into some kind of devices that kept it firmly in place. Its eyes were looking up above its head at the researchers who I couldn't see from my vantage point into the room. Its gaze was a mix of resignation and puzzlement, and I knew that its fate would be that of its brother or sister that was carried past me in the tub.

Tom Waits sings that what keeps mankind alive is "his billiance in keeping his humanity repressed." He's takling about the bestial acts of humanity that retain our humanity. What strikes me about the dream was the environmental detail of this research floor full of normal conversation while monkeys stood by forced into the role as objects, living systems, surfaces upon which hypotheses would be tested. They were mere elements in a scene of scientific research taking place one floor below a library filled with children attending to the storytelling of older women. The human care one floor above matched the callousness one floor below.

Jingle for the day

"The best part of not going to bed is the voices in your head."

This jingle should be an overlay of the old Folger's jingle: "The best part of waking up is Folger's in your cup."

Practice it, teach it to others.