Toe (in which I am confused about the "personal" and the "political")

I feel bad that I am not demonstrating. My toe hurts and I am disconnected, wrapped up in anxieties I am endeavoring to unravel.  I feel that people might be taking attendance, and somehow judge me. This feeling makes me not want to take part as a kind of resistance to pressure. I want a revolution? But since I think that “human nature is basically bad/flawed, etc.,” I am not convinced… Zizek said in his speech that the problem is not greed or corruption, but the system. I wrote in a youtube comment to that speech that if that is true, why is that that all systems - religious, political, economic, interpersonal - are infected by greed and corruption? The personal betrayals that have been visited on me infect my “politics” to the extent that I can say I have “politics.”  Of course I feel moral outrage (over many many things, not just the political and economic crises of our times) (and all times).  But when poets post things like “if you don’t follow Occupy Wall Street there is something wrong with you,” I feel a resistance to a kind of bullying groupthink.  It disturbs me.And then there is my toe, and a kind of exacerbated sensitivity at the moment to noise, public places, and so on.  Don’t misunderstand me.  I may participate, later.  If they (we) get their (our) revolution, I will happily embark with ecstatic others on a dérive to end all dérives, I will revel in the vibrations of the freed/ transformed city and share what I notice with others.  It's weird, I guess I see the end result of a revolution as a kind of "radical transformation of consciousness" or a sublime "rave" rather than the more pragmatic "better social policies" for which it makes more sense to struggle. That's a kind of surrealist thing, I suppose: revolution in the service of ecstasy. I have in the past struggled for worker’s parity, I don’t know why I am trying to legitimate myself, I don’t need to do so to please them.  They are judgmental, and I am feeling weary (and wary)  both in life and of their potential judgment. Indeed, the political, even moral ambivalence  (no, not ambivalence…can we call it confusion?) is one of my distinguishing characteristics

It is a great pity I am not more “political.” For one thing, from a selfish viewpoint, if I were more political I would be a more popular poet and my books would be studied in classes, etc., because people want to be “fired up.” Still I think I am better at “humor” and “melancholy” and “decoration” than “firing up.” Recently though I re-bought Diane diPrima’s Revolutionary Letters.  Just in case. In the same way that I have the cat carriers in a hall closet rather than in the basement.  Just in case one needs to flee or fight, or in case there is some kind of disaster.

I have nightmares.  Last night  a nightmare that Gary was going to take a younger wife. In fact he had already claimed the younger wife of another friend, a past and estranged acquaintance of his. She seemed like a bit of a zombie.  So did he. I believe she had some elaborate  headgear – a wig? a hat? She and he were both unflapabble.  They were, I think, staying with me.  Nice, right? They were staying with me! Or in any case in some semi-public space sharing meals with me (it took place, as do so many of my dreams, in a kind of “Japan” at a mall I have visited before in my dreams but not in fact in real life; my dreams are rife with these sorts of places, parts of cities that seem very familiar but not in the waking world). At one point I stole a paper bag (or was it plastic?) from him that was supposed to have contained his balls.  In fact it had hard boiled eggs, and a grapefruit. I remember eating the grapefruit, which was something I generally do not eat. There were other parts of the dream that I am censoring. 

This is all very uncomfortable. I saw this weekend in a used bookstore a book that had belonged to me, a signed book, with a hefty price tag, one that Gary had sold to finance his move out.  I was overcome by the injustice of this. I left a note for the proprietor asking for it back, although I feel bad that the bookseller should have to take the financial fall for something that was not really his fault.  I do want the book back, but of course it is “not about the book.” The book is a stand-in for everything else, for all those years of bad communication and neglect and sorrow. If I could somehow transform the rage I feel about the injustice of this to a public rage against social injustice and take it to the streets, that might be a good thing.  I just don’t think that a systemic shift is going to prevent people from doing things that are traumatizing, hurtful, illegal, and immoral, and that sort of makes me wonder about the extent to which “a change in material conditions” is going to (might) (would) lessen the misery of being a human being. A little. Some. Maybe a lot. Perhaps the problem really is me and my bad attitude, especially my bad civic attitude, and if this is so perhaps I deserve all the chaos that has been visited upon me. I don’t know exactly what to do about that, however.

How much more angst would amuse you this morning? I hope that by writing this I can transform my mood a little, get some of the poison out of my system.

I have been thinking some of the first wife… of how I hardly thought of her… or only as a cardboard figure… and wondering what she must have felt, what she must have gone through. I wonder how she felt seeing the public affirmation of what initially was and what must have seemed like such an ideal partnership? All these real people, with their real lives, just struggling through. I am sympathetic to The Struggle.  What else can we do?  More power to them; I mean, more power to us.

Would the end of, or at least the transformation of, capitalism, contribute to the healing of our emotional lives?  Would the end of workplace hierarchies and long alienating hours in jobs that don’t fulfill us and bills that mount every higher and the ranklings of resentments about Differences racial, sexual, and economic trickle down into our emotional lives? I suppose they would. It would be so lovely if that would happen.  I’m not convinced, though, that my going out to Zucotti square on my compromised toe that makes me unable to dance is going to help that process along. We will see.

May our lives and hearts be healed.