Melancholia of a Burning Bucket of Water

A curious melancholia indeed has descended upon me tonight.  I will probably take to my journal and write about my feelings in more depth later on tonight, but for the moment this will do as a place of expression.  And besides, what is the use of having a blog if I cannot bare my soul at some stage in it?

I did indeed have a pleasant afternoon wandering around the surrealism exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art here in Brisbane.  Plenty of good pieces from the Surrealist era, although sadly not as much Dali as I would have liked to have seen.  Having said that though it was amazing to see some well known pieces of Rene Magritte's work.

There was however, a point where the psychic assault of the Surrealist imagery almost broke me.  Some of it is incredibly powerful imagery, deeply rooted in the unconscious and the expression of unseen imagery of the mind in a concrete visual form.  It's the language of dreams.  It all worked to make me feel slightly off-balance, and that was perhaps not what I needed after the rest of this week.  I have struggled a bit with a feeling of listlessness, with poor sleep, and irritability.  It probably isn't surprising for me to feel that way given a relationship has just ended.  It's early in the grieving process, and there is still a lot I have to come to terms with.

I definitely feel the burden of my own foolishness.  I think of all the things that could have been different, but I accept that things happened as they did and there is nothing within my power to change them.  Did Bono actually say something meaningful when he said 'a man will beg, a man will crawl, on the sheer face of love, like a fly on a wall?'  It feels that way some days, you try and try and then are shown bluntly that your best is not good enough, and there is nothing you can do to change things.  You make mistakes, you say the wrong thing, it all comes back to bite you on the bum, but you don't know when or where.  You start to think whether you were actually happy the last few months, or just maintaining a facade of delusion, afraid to admit to yourself that you can see the cracks growing, see love dying before your eyes.  Oh how you try to revive it, like someone trying to save a dying man, only to see all your efforts, no matter what their quality, of no effect.  It turns you to face yourself and question whether you are really cut out for partnership.  You know you can't survive in the world of the casual hook up, the pub, the night club.  No chance of competing with the noise and the alpha male swarms.

You were happy.  You had found someone who you could love and be loved by, and now it's all gone, and you find yourself cast adrift again on an ocean of loneliness and frustration.  You are devoid of the sacred connection you seek, of the simple joy of holding someone in the darkness and talking about things, about the day, about life.  Now you have none of that, just a cold empty bed and a world you had struggled so hard to move on from and transform yourself that threatens to press back in on you and consume your joy.

I am sure it's not all bad.  I keep saying I feel gratitude for so many aspects of the last 18 months, but I also know that I now have to grieve the loss of a lot of good things I had.  If I could do things differently, would I have?  If I had, would it have made a difference?

I don't know the answers to such things.

On Sudden Inevitabilities...

Like suddenly finding ones self single again. 

I thought I may be feeling worse, but I am surprisingly accepting about it all.  I have learned a lot about myself in the 18 months or so.  It has been good, and I feel I have a lot more to be grateful for than to be feeling angry and resentful about.  I feel I have grown more as a person, got in touch with spirit a lot more, and learned to be more positive and open.

In the face of all this I think there are a few practices that seemed to have helped me.  First there is having something outside of your own world, something you do for little or no reward.  I have been working as a volunteer at the Pine Rivers Art Gallery for 8 or 9 months now, and feel it is something I would like to continue to do.  The staff and other volunteers are good people, and I would miss not working with them.


The second thing I think is important, really important in fact, is to keep a journal, and to write about all the good and bad things that have happened, all the hopes you have and the disappointments you may have felt.  It doesn't have to be formal or regular, but more just a conversation you are having.  Sometimes it is good to have that space and time to reflect and gain perspective on things. 

At a time like this I think we all think about the loneliness that faces us, and we can be afraid we will not meet anyone like the last person or we go on the rebound and try and pick up, just to feel normal and to experience some sort of intimacy.  It's a temptation I think we all experience, if we are not feeling so crushed by the whole feeling of loss.  In some ways it is a yearning for something new, for the hope of another spring after the winter of discontent and disappointment.  It's good to remember that we will not be alone forever, unless we choose to be.

In the meantime, we endure the in between times, the time of adjustment, of finding new contentment in rediscovering all the other aspects of who we are.  We endure platitudes like "there's plenty more fish in the sea," when all we want to do is scream.  In the end I don't to stay in the sea, I want to crawl onto the land evolve and grow legs and wings and become a new creature; I don't want to follow after the old patterns, I want to forge a new path and a new paradigm for myself.  Why should any of us lead a life of quiet desperation?

Saturday Morning Fever

Ah, it's a lazy Saturday morning for once in my life.  I have a morning off from volunteer work, I completed an essay for uni yesterday afternoon, and I am consequently treating myself to a home alone morning while the girls are out roller skating.  This of course involves listening to the music on rage on the telly, and surfing the net and blogging.  All this is accompanied by several nice hot cups of tea.  I am also tempted to go enjoy some sun in the garden and bash out a painting while I let the cats wander round and get some fresh air and sunshine.

So this week was the culmination of a very busy fortnight.  At work we had three 40 foot containers full of furniture arrive, which not only had to be emptied out of said containers, but then loaded up into the truck and delivered to various freight depots across Brisbane.

On top of this I was struggling to find time and motivation to complete an essay on Kant's idea of the Categorical Imperative and his hypothetical example of the inquiring murderer.  It's a tricky thought exercise, but in the end we have to remember that while Kant's ethics are ideals, this is an imperfect world and often our morality and rules are similarly imperfect and flawed.  Idealism is capable of only being a guide to our behaviour, something a lot of religious fundamentalists haven't quite managed to get.  In the end there are no hard and fast rules that determine morality, there are guiding principles and ethical ideals, but to try and follow them to the letter on all situations is a recipe for losing your humanity.


In that spirit then, I am going to spend a day reclaiming my humanity and getting out and relaxing away from regular duties to art and study and enjoying some time with family.  Duty and responsibility are important, and we need to work hard at them, but we also have a responsibility and duty to ourselves, to tend our souls and our relationships with family and friends.

Hobnobbing About Hobbes

Haven't really had my mind on blogging the last couple of weeks.  My thinking has been otherwise engaged in the intricacies of thinking through philosophy and ethics, and trying to understand Hobbes and the idea of the social contract.

So far it seems I have the gist of it by saying Hobbes sees humanity as existing in a state of nature, or lawlessness for the most part, and that where there is lawlessness there is no violation of a moral code.  When people band together and form governments to regulate their affairs and legislate morality, then the people in that society are bound by that social contract they have set upon themselves and they are moral primarily out of the fear of punishment, and they are altruistic because it gains them something, even if it is only the warm inner glow of satisfaction that comes from performing a good deed.  His idea seems to be that humans are incapable of being moral or altruistic without a carrot and a stick to encourage these behaviours.

To me this is a cynical view of human nature, written at the time of the English Civil War, and it perhaps reflected the anarchy of those times with its emphasis on a strong leadership.  It is however the wellspring of much social contract theory.

So why do I dislike it?  As this is a blog and not an essay I can offer a personal opinion here.  I think in taking a view that humanity is incapable of rising up without authoritarian leadership to make laws and keep us in line.  It also takes the view that we do nothing for purely altruistic and selfless means.  If this is so we have to wonder about all the people who have given their lives in the service of humanity, what exactly they gained out of it.  I also think that it says we are incapable of making ourselves better for unselfish reasons, and that we always either need the carrot or the stick to motivate us.  Does this lead to a thought process where if we are incapable of being better people then we should not try that hard and just do the bare minimum to stay out of trouble and devote all our efforts to a selfish pursuit of happiness and feathering our own nests?

I think instead we should strive instead to heal our world by being more spiritual, less selfish, and more aware of how our actions affect those around us, and most importantly, taking responsibility for ourselves and not waiting for the government, or god, or blind fate to come and fix our lives, but instead to start that journey for ourselves.