Interpolating desire

I

Excuse me, I say, repeatedly

(how presumptuous to call you out like that)!

You turn, aborted from your womb.

I can’t see and I can’t find my glasses;

I can’t hear and I can’t find headphones…

can you help me… No?

You’re too busy… Texting.

I cannot find my life either;

not to mention my death.

Have you found yours?

I’m authentically unexamined.

I’m a virtual nowhere man.

You like the Beatles?

Everyone is supposed to respect what they did,

but who honestly does?

Truth be told, I’m an aesthetic heretic.

Are you going to burn me?

It is important to be earnest .

Can I be with you?

Can I even call you… To action?

(What is that these days: can you Google it for me?)

 Or am I being like a telemarketer… Worse?

This isn’t the usual time for a call!

(You don’t have to tell me twice!)

‘cause there will be no enjoyment;

That’s the one thing I can promise.

These are untimely meditations…

 II

…I know: there are so many things I don’t know

am I philosophic?… Ingenious?… Average?… Crazy?

I’m sure I have a disorder — I hope it is a new one…

maybe I have syphilis… Profound people used to have that.   

 I’m not profound, and don’t get laid enough anymore

what do you think… Do I look intellectual?

I watch TED Talks? I support all the causes.

I love the Other… and I will love her difference,

(by my last statement I  acknowledge feminism)

as soon as I know what difference is.

 These are questions we can defer!

My ideas are, indeed, worth spreading,

even if you don’t think so…

You’re always unsatisfied…

What do you want from me?

 I’m only ideological!

You could have refused;

I didn’t make you turn, around!.

hopefully?      

III

Silent? And you look so amiable!

And you’re hot too.…

 Damn… And I’m not that bad looking?

We could have fucked, once , twice… Three times?

I’m just lying to you and myself;

we probably would have humiliated each other,

and maybe we would have both gotten off,

but fortune controls half of what we do,

and she is a woman, so who knows.

I would have tried to make sure you enjoyed it.

(I think I know what I’m doing…

 You would have told me otherwise?)

I may have even slept with you,

I get very warm though, and I kick…

And I get up early in the morning.

(Oh the dreaded morning!)

I could’ve made you fried eggs and toast,

and I could’ve given them a smile of a child.

It  would’ve been like the movies,

except with all the parts you don’t see —

a virtual encounter more real than the dreams we live,

sleeping together in the world day to day.

We could have made it a more permanent thing,

keeping it casual , of course.

I mean if it developed into something else…

I guess I would be all right with that

but I’m just super busy …

So I thought maybe…

No. You’re not the one.

After I had so much investment!

We were going to be Facebook friends (with benefits?)

I’m sure we know some of the same people,

I think I’ve seen you before?

Have you seen me?

IV

It’s a shame really; absolutely tiresome.

I had plans; we were going to network.

Love at first use…

Is it me? Am I less than nothing?

Are you the void?

Can we create a harmonious antithesis?

Is anybody anything anymore?

What is a man? What is a woman? What is a thing?

You still don’t want to define them together?

Have courage to experience perversion virtually.

Are you : a symptom? A fetish? A commodity?

Or am I experiencing commodity fetishism?

Don’t you know it’s Valentine’s Day?

Fine ! I will sit by myself.

 My mood is black, apparently,

like the coffee we steal from poor children,

in order to save them from poverty.

I guess narcissism really is idle talk.

I drink my opaque coffee, in our evening land.

Looking at our digital image in a Styrofoam cup.

Together we make a reflection beyond binary.

I have doubts, naturally, you have yours too,

because fantasies are the real shit of life.

But, of course YOLO! And so I am alive. For now.

Happy Mother's Day; or the best philosopher!

The best philosopher I know

So it’s Mother’s Day. And I thought I would explain why my mother is the best philosopher I know, but I hope my readers will permit me an important excursus, which will shed light, I hope, on the principle argument

.

Yesterday, I had the misfortune to learn that several of the older residents of the apartment building in which I live, who also have disabilities, grew up in institutions. As a disabled person who is very young, one hears of institutions, but one cannot imagine them. For better or worse, right or wrong, they are socially constructed, though with considerable evidence, as horrible instances of oppression, injustice and abuse. To me, they have always been the unspeakable nightmare — the ineffable yet ever present perdition, against which I have been, albeit with considerable help, crafting the salvation of a' ‘normal' life’. Though I knew of'' institutions' as some perverse and daemonic Platonic form of social discrimination, the notion that someone I knew, however remotely, could have been subjected to that, in the far too recent past, made me nothing short of physically ill. I cannot presume to imagine the full extent of   this experience, but I imagined being African-American and seeing a museum exhibit of that odious trade which  is a salutary scourge for anyone tacitly or explicitly espousing the moral superiority of the' benevolent white race'. I imagined those shackles rubbing my joints raw, the hot sun burning my flesh, as though I actually were the raw meat people treated me like, and the poison of the whip's teeth that ripped my back to shreds, as well as renting my self-respect into countless miniscule pieces.

As fanciful or, indeed, disrespectful such similes may seem to some, metaphors often have an uncomfortable truth. It is a monstrously ironic fact that those institutionalized for the alleged  reason that they could not contribute to the labor market, often engaged in slave labor within the context of institutionalized life; and in many cases, they provided exemplary, though fetishized and exotic, case studies for the evolving logic of capitalism. And this was, of course, in a time when the barbarity of slavery had long since been abolished, while politicians and social engineers sang the siren call of enlightenment. At the same time persons of color, women and gay people were gaining long-overdue rights, many disabled people were unnecessarily confined to institutions against their will. Regrettably, many still are, or many live in conditions far worse, even in self-proclaimed progressive and multicultural societies.

I expressed repugnance to an older disabled person, against cowardly parents who opted for institutionalization. She, fortunately, was not raised in an institution because of her courageous parents, who chose not to surrender her to the care of the state. She advised me not to judge. “That’s just what was done”, she said, “and the great majority of people thought they were doing a kindness”, by abandoning and renouncing their children. How could they have the knowledge required to raise a child with a disability? Who would want or deserve such a burden? This task requires state efforts and expert knowledges.

While I'm not denying the difficulty of making decisions regarding your child's future or the power of social coercion, there are right decisions and there are wrong ones. She compared it to the south, and said that the vast majority of people supported slavery, as the morally justified discourse & practice. Without an arrogant overestimation of my moral judgment, I would consider my life not worth living, if I relented, for one instant, on being an abolitionist, and my entire life has been about trying to stay just ever so slightly ahead of the warm winds of change and peace. The Good and the Right must be the final arbiters of history, otherwise humanity becomes, not the goal of philosophers, but the gossip of the relativist. One may feel the breath of life, when listening to the soft and often muted voice of reason within our hearts. So I think those parents should feel great shame at what they did. Moreover, just as I must remember, as a' white man,' that all of my privilege rests on the beaten backs of''' colored races',’ the walking man’ must remember institutions as one of the often forgotten malignancies of the dialectic of Enlightenment.

Also, this is why a have little patience, for those who have internalized their oppression, and so advocate and accommodating politics toward the able-bodied majority. I refuse to be involuntarily disabled, and so those who wish to capitulate to the able-bodied majority can be a uncle Toms, if they want, but freedom has never arisen from acquiescence. I have no truck with resignation, since it is only by following the example of Rosa Parks that we now have, in Ottawa at least, fully accessible transit. It is only by being’ out’ as disabled persons that we have gained the right to be out in public without shame or fear. For this reason I both desire and demand liberation by any means necessary, and I would gladly join the ‘Crippled Panthers’, if there were such an organization.

Thankfully, though institutions were waning considerably, my mom said no! She said no, even when many of my relatives thought institutionalization was still something that you did. So the first thing I owe to my mom is freedom in a literal sense, and for that alone I have inexpressible gratitude. More broadly, however, growing up my mom ceaselessly rejected the notion of an institutionalized life, while still working tirelessly to accommodate my physical needs, in a way that is both extremely effective and caring, demonstrating her fantastic skills as a mother and exemplary professional skills as a nurse. I swear sometimes I think that my mom believes, rather than presenting a handicap, my disability gives me some kind of super power; I was never prevented from doing anything, or expected to do any less. Consequently, our home remained a loving family, and I never felt like I turned my family into a micro institution; for if anything, I was expected to do more. So thank you, mom, for the more abstract freedom to not be subject to the "subtle racism of lowered expectations”.

More broadly still, there is one last freedom for which I must thank my mom and that is the freedom to learn how to be great, a large part of which I learned from her. My mom is the best philosopher I know. She is immensely courageous, wise, caring, just and truthful, dare I say to a fault. She fights for all people and is a mother too many, proving that motherhood is a subject position, rather than a biological role. She is authentic, dare I say to a fault, and I have learned just as much from her weaknesses as I have from her strengths, since she’s always insisted that parenting is a dialogical process of mutual learning and improvement. She strives for excellence in all things, and she rarely gives up on her own dreams or the ones of those she loves.

So I guess what I’m most thankful for is that my mom made sure I was pragmatic yet, unlike so many disabled people, not severely touched by the scars of cynicism. The best freedom she gave me out of all of them was the freedom to imagine. I can know that a better world is possible, both for myself and for others, because together my mother and I work to make that dream a reality. My mom is my best friend, since she is many things to many people, and she remains an ageless lover of wisdom and a true citizen of the world. Happy Mother’s Day to, my mom and all moms.

What is humanity: The love that moves the sun and all the other stars

What is humanity?: The love that moves the sun and all the other stars

dedicated to Benjamin Booi, a future philosopher

To my beloved parents, friends, care workers, colleagues and teachers, who have helped, either in the past or in the present, to make this one of the best and most curious days of my life, having completed my MA thesis with distinction, let me extend my sincerest thanks and gratitude; for contented as I am, I have received quite enough praise. If it is, indeed, true that I have done well, despite often succumbing to vice, it is only because I have been properly supported, taught and loved by the many diverse people in my life, who have enriched it with their innumerable virtues and beauty in all its senses. I would be nothing without the extraordinary persons and marvelous things that make up my world.

All the talk of’ negativity’ in philosophy often makes us forget that contingency ought to ignite an inextinguishable fire of gratitude within the hearts of the women and men, who are fortunate enough to dwell on this earth for all too short a time, and whose capacities are often unnecessarily limited by chains of  injustice. Though my flame often waivers, almost to the point of oblivion, it never truly goes out, since I always have access to the twin illuminations afforded by both reason and love. I see this in books and art, perhaps too often, it’s true, but I also have tremendous resources, as I engage in open dialogue with the persons around me. For every person is a library, the extent of whose catalog one can only begin to understand, and at that, with tremendous interpretive effort and humility. Every sentient being, as an epistemological resource, is to be treated with the same respect that we lovers of wisdom treat canonical texts; both have resources we can only begin to understand, and both require extreme patience and care.

As I move forward, hoping to teach, but knowing that is unlikely, I feel obliged to give thanks for my tremendous education (formal and informal, undergraduate and graduate. I see the pursuit of reason and beauty as a tremendous gift, since my parents were told that it was likely I would not speak. This rather dire scenario aside, it genuinely horrifies me to think about what my life may have been like without constant attempts to engage in dialogue with being, in order to question concepts of beauty and truth, historically conditioned though these questions are.  As Plato knew well, knowledge cannot be separated from virtue. Our thoughts about the world must  cause us to act with love, contentment, humility, patience, constancy, and bravery within it. Only then will we commit to caring and justice, which can have extraordinary and unforeseen consequences. In my education, I have found this, and I can only hope to improve the world from what I have been fortunate enough to learn. It’s not an exaggeration to say that, were it not for the humanities, and those interested to teach them, I probably would have ended my life in a manner far less poetic than that of Socrates. So I owe to my education, my life in general, as well as what little beauty and wisdom I have gained. Being gay, I find it comically ironic that Sophia is my most constant, though admittedly not physically satisfying, lover and beloved. And she will never desert you, for as long as you live and, perhaps, after you die.

And so, Benjamin, you rightly tell me that the history of political thought is boring. Okay. I’ll concede that the first time it often is. And you make the somewhat more dubious claim that, you simply will not like classical music, as aesthetic preferences are simply a matter of choice. God knows, just like you in second year, my initial erotic liaison with Lady philosophy amounted to the worst kind of sexual encounter imaginable; I was equally and simultaneously, bored, frightened, confused, tearful, indignant, and wrathful, as well as many of the other vices about which I had to read. And as you know all too well, from being my colloquially Platonic friend, my second encounter with Plato, though Grecian in inspiration, was anything but Platonic, in both senses. But as time passes, a thoughtful life, in my youthful yet considered estimation, is one full of innumerable consolations and pleasures beyond the transitory. This is to say that a thoughtful life need not be and, indeed, must not be, austere, tiresome or lugubrious; on the contrary, we ought to derive great pleasure from it. It is from my sheer love of pleasure and, thus, sheer love of love, for all things and all humankind, that I pursue wisdom. I hope this is not, primarily, for my own satisfaction, but out of devotion to the quest for truth and the challenge to understand others, as a committed, though temporary, citizen of the world.

I am not here to tyrannize or judge anyone, knowing all too well that approach to education and friendship is extremely ineffective, unhealthy and painful. Everyone is a miracle, while having to do very little, in order to deserve love, grace and forgiveness, whether one believes in Christianity or not. I simply think that everyone’s life could be more still, having beauty and truth, if we find unique and ever-changing ways to serve its manifestations. Whether, for you, this involves reading Plato and listening to classical music, I cannot say. Yet I do urge you to give both a sincere try; for we are both highly erotic men, in the broad sense, so I can only presume that, as I was, in time, you will be drawn to the beauty you may find contained in these things, and so many others, as we both hope to live different lives, which, though they may diverge are, united in the pursuit of justice, excellence and caring.

You’re already so far on the way to being perfect, just by being the authentic, compassionate and engaging person that you are. Yet here is some humble advice from an aspiring philosopher, who, as a lover of wisdom, must acknowledge that he knows nothing. I am not much older than you, nor much wiser, so we are both bound to make comic and tragic errors until we die — such things comprise the wonderful drama of life, which is far greater than any of the classics you will read. Yet always be sure that you are the author of your own life. For when you seek approval from the many, surrendering the copyright of your narrative to convention, you become a slave to vices, particularly narcissistic inadequacy and capital accumulation. So take time to pen your own pros with thoughtful precision, since then you will begin to possess more peace. This is why I truly believe the unexamined life to be not worth living. And why you should never stop being an enthusiastic, though reasonable, optimist. “Be in the world but not of the world”.

Never let anyone tell you to not have fun or that they have a right to judge you, since they don’t. You probably don’t need my advice on this, but it’s always good to hear, as well as great to put on paper, that no one is more perfect than she who loves with a sincere heart and is curious with the same. Run from needless conventions, as you would a fatal disease. Always take time to listen to your conscience and consider the advice of other people seriously. This requires that you take time to get to know them, and most importantly, yourself. Put down your cell phone. Smell flowers. This is what I’ve learned in school.

Love yourself, whenever people won’t; love truth wherever people don’t. For in doing these two things we experience the full extent of humanity and the humanities. For as St. Paul says, “if I speak with the tongues of men and Angels and have not love, I am nothing. And, as Jesus says in the gospel, “the truth shall set you free”; so the greatest gift you get from a humanistic education is brief moments in which you experience peace, having felt “the love that moves the sun and all the other stars”. Why Plato chose the sun to represent the concept of The Good is that it doesn’t discriminate, no one can deplete its power, and it never tires of shedding light or giving us a sense of peace, when we feel the warmth of its illumination.