I opened up the paper this morning (in the cool and rain which felt like a blessing) and started laughing as I read how the very same voices that trashed Michael Jackson as trying to deny his race as a black man are now lauding him and calling for a celebration of “this great and talented black man.” Do people think that the rest of us forget so quickly?

And I am not quite up to cross-posting yet, but Heathermoon (of course and always) brought up a really good thread about how Body Dysmorphia played into all this. Not just the obvious involvement in Mr. Jackson’s life, but in our own – individually and culturally.

We suffer from a cultural inability to accept ourselves on any level with diving into extremes. We either go to mortification in which we declare that nothing matters and the only way to live is without any recognition of the importance of our health or environments; or we demand that such a recognition of one or the other take precedence over all else.

Body Dysmorphia is not just about the inability to see your body in its reality (seeing oneself as too fat, too thin, out of shape when you are not) but it is also an emotional inability to accept the reality of your body as being integral to your presence.

We place upon our body, often, the same unrealistic demands that we place on love and money. That having it “a certain way” is proof and protection against pain and uncertainty.

It is why aging is so unpopular. When you become aware of the process of aging and how it changes your body, you become aware of the reality of your life and of your mortality. You can no longer preserve the illusion of eternal youth and when you are moved into that awareness one of to things happen – either you become even more self-absorbed – defining life be your imminent demise (and adopting the “wisdom of age” as a defense), or you begin to flower in your awareness that life goes on beyond your lifespan and yet you are an integral part of the future.

But again, we cycle back to the social/cultural/individual problem we have with perceiving the future. For one, the reality of the future is that it is not centered on us, on the individual. For two, the future cannot be known or predicted – it is rife with uncertainty and in a world where we are full of such dis-ease, uncertainty becomes truly frightening.

Because we are not comfortable in our own skins. Because it is rare that any of us begin to develop the ability to see ourselves in the present and in our reality, we seek comfort through surety in outside things. We strive to believe myths that youth and beauty, wealth and ownership will somehow protect and shield us from the potential pains in life. We seek to avoid vulnerability at the same time that we tout it as the goal.

Yet look closely at the kinds of “vulnerability” we promote. Sharing one’s feelings can easily become a wall to hide behind. As long as I am just reporting my feelings to you I never have to explore what it all means to me in the context of my life and experience. We think intimacy is reporting. Having conversations with phrases that are carefully chosen to convey a meaning without our ever having to discover what that meaning truly feels like and how it effects us and how we relate to the world.

It’s like…relationship patterns. It is not an easy thing to grow and change and become the kind of person who is capable of intimacy and vulnerability, but it can be done. However, if the action of it all is still rooted in picking the same damn type of person as before then what we are doing is insulating ourselves from having to be intimate and vulnerable by never learning how to pick someone who is also capable of doing it. We pick the old and then complain how rotten they are and laud ourselves for not putting up with that behavior any more when in actuality, while the person may not “be there”, it is not their fault really for treating us without intimacy or vulnerability or respect, it is ours for not also going through the learning process of discovering how to pick someone who just may be capably of truly being there.

Because if you have only just learned how to be capable of intimacy and vulnerability oneself, that is miles from knowing what it will be like to be in a relationship with someone who also knows how to do that. It is a scary thing because there are so many unknown qualities to it.

And our extremes become more subtly worded. “I will never do this.” “I do not want to do that.” “I will not accept this into my life.”

Extremes are only another form of self defense.

Like when we talked about Jane and Jim and boundaries, a part of intimacy is learning that there are several levels of boundaries and they are not static but their place develops as you begin to know the behaviors and boundaries of someone else.

Ugh…second pot of coffee already, I am almost caught up (that is such a lie), but I found my boxing gym and am going to go check it out today. I think I need something with a physical kind of expression and skill again to get me through my next round of projects which are just so complicated and intense, the unraveling of their process just gives me a headache.

New Performance Video!  Requiem for a God what is that little flower? copyright 2000-2009 Cassandra Tribe. All rights reserved. For permission to use any of this material please contact info@loveandwords.com

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