Weeks 45-46: Aye, I, Eye

Episode 30 – Weeks 45-46:  Aye, I, Eye

 In which the podcaster introduces himself, dissolves all boundaries, and stirs up some weather.

LINKS & INFO

Moustafa Bayoumi 

graysexuality  

Henri Tajfel   

Mammal, Roof Books, 2023  

Neurodiversity 

Vitreous Detachment  

Transcript

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MY 12-MONTH VIDEO FAST 

EPISODE 30 – WEEKS 45-46: Aye, I, Eye

Hi. My name is Richard Loranger and I’ve been a mammal on this planet for 64 ½ years. For the past 10 ½ months I’ve been making a podcast called “My 12-Month Video Fast,” which you’re listening to right now, ostensibly about the effects that removing my video media center and eliminating streaming and gaming from my life at home have had on my health, creative life, and life in general. This is in fact the 30th Episode over the course of 46 weeks so far, which means that there are some people, perhaps even you, who have been listening to me ramble, postulate, ruminate, reminisce, recount, dramatize, diatribe, and just plain babble for quite a while now. And I imagine through all that, some of you feel as if you’ve gotten to know me, at least a bit. Or a little better. And I wonder, is that the case? Certainly constant listeners have heard about a lot of things I’ve done, adventures pursued and trouble gotten into, in the past distant and recent, and you know what they say, Actions are the key to the jellybean garden (or something like that). As well you might feel familiar with various things and ways that I think (whatever that means), i.e. and e.g., perspectives I might have on topics sundry and otherwise, but aren’t ideas fleeting and occasionally contrary little snipes. All this to say, Yeah, you might have some construction of “me” in your mind, but does that constitute knowing me (and yes you know I’m going to say, whatever that means, and I mean it)? So given all the patience you’ve shown and fortitude of listening, even in these past few minutes that I’ve been droning on, I think that the very least I can do at this point, with so few episodes left, is introduce myself, or my “self” (whatever la di da), as I see it.

It’s not that I haven’t ever given you a sense or glimpse of what I’m about; I have at times, for instance a deep dive into my sexuality in Episode 25, “Corrode to Joy” (and wasn’t that some TMI). In that and other cases where I’ve touched upon a topic earlier, I may go light on details here and refer you to the relevant ep in case you’d like to dig the deep dirt. But I do also hope to meld these disparate facets together in some sort of holistic amorphous protean open-field conceptual nebula, or something like that.

At the start of this episode I described myself as “a mammal on this planet,” which some have heard me say before and some, I’m sure, consider to be a bit of humor. But it’s not. I actually identify as mammal – and before you poo-poo that, as so many do, hear me out, because I have specific reasons and rationale for doing so.

I find identity selection to be problematic, partially because it shouldn’t be a selection – it should just be. I should know it. Right? But there seem to be so many choices! I first came across the idea of cultural identity in any depth in a graduate class at Brooklyn College in 2001. That was Postcolonial Lit, taught by Moustafa Bayoumi, a brilliant scholar/writer/activist and human being. The class was populated mostly by women of quite a few backgrounds and ethnicities – Italian, Middle Eastern, Caribbean, Jewish, to name a few. They were super engaged, and both the diversity and the engagement were a pleasure in contrast to many of my other courses. Amidst the Postcolonial studies there was naturally a lot of conversation amongst my classmates regarding their identities. Most were in their twenties and somewhere in the process of emerging from their families and cultural enclaves into the broader world; I was in my early forties and had spent most of twenty years gallivanting around the country doing poetry and performance with all kinds of people, and whereas I’d encountered and hung out with and befriended folks from many of these backgrounds, and was familiar and had engaged with a lot of cultures, I hadn’t had much pointed discussion about the foundations and reasons and intrinsic needs for identity. So during this class discourse I mostly listened, and spent more and more time trying to figure out where I fit in the matrix of identity. Here is more or less what I came up with.

To start, they say I’m a white male, but whether I innately identify as one or, if this is easier for you, consider that my primary identity, is another matter. I am undeniably White, by most standards, what has been called Caucasian and European-American – though the latter is less certain since I’m one-quarter Russian Jew, and ancestrally beyond several generations I have no idea. But I am White per se and acutely aware of White Privilege, which I resist and disdain, and I get angry when I find it’s been a factor in my situation or my behavior. And I was sure raised into it, starting in 1960, and into White American culture in general, which is…what? Consumerism? Competition? Rote Christianity? Anyone who knows me knows that I can’t stand organized team sports, which I see as a subtext for the artificial hierarchies of social oppression (meaning, We’re Number One!); that I can’t stand shopping and have been known to lose my shit in an Ikea; and that I abhor uncritical adherence to ideology, which certainly doesn’t mean all Christians or other belief systems (I did say “rote”), but does include irrational and fear-driven political and social stances. The latter does extend beyond White culture, but you get the idea. I never could find any meaning in the endless trudge from sports field to church to mall. (And perhaps it’s worth noting, in tangent, that a lack of foundational culture might leave many White Americans with an echoing emptiness and sense of disconnection, conscious or no, that some, I suspect, attempt to fill with – other things.) At any rate, yes, I’m White, but it doesn’t bring me pride or joy in and of itself.

And I am male, as I’ve mentioned – male-assigned-at-birth, as we say. I present as male to most, but that itself doesn’t feel like “me”. Presentation doesn’t feel important enough to be a pivot. Maybe that’s because I’m also non-binary, that I do know, always have been, though I didn’t have the language for it until the last ten years or so. So that’s something. But I don’t feel the need to present as anything in particular. Gender just doesn’t feel performative to me, or for me; it feels like it just is. It’s a consistent feeling and has been for a long time, so I guess that qualifies as identity of sorts (given what the word actually means), but it still doesn’t feel like it’s everything, that it’s all I am. Besides, to me non-binary doesn’t feel like “not one but both or in-between,” because the number two doesn’t resonate for me in this either. I don’t feel a sense of two genders, nor any particular number, so gender-wise I suppose I’m more non-numerical than non-binary. I could be wrong, but I don’t suspect there are a lot of people who share this experience, and I wonder how many it would take to qualify as a group to identify with. The non-numericals.

As I mentioned, I’ve already done a foray into my sexual attraction or preference in the ep “Corrode to Joy,” but I’ll touch on it lightly here as it’s an essential facet of this discussion as well – so apologies to those who’ve heard these details prior.. I am mostly homosexual but not entirely, historically at least a wee bit bi. But I’m also gray, that is graysexual, to some extent and more so as I’ve gotten older. I don’t have as strong a sex drive as some, and often require affection for interest and arousal, and generally always have, except on certain substances (which I don’t use any more). Gray- and asexual folks have often been marginalized within the broader gay culture, and I’ve certainly experienced being othered by more libido-focused gay men. Consequently I’ve never considered sexual attraction and practice to be core or central to my being or self-conception, and my social interactions have not usually been centrally focused on gay culture, though it is important to me, as are gay and trans and queer+++ rights and acceptance. Very important. Still, however or wherever on the queer spectrum I identify, and I do identify as queer, and proudly so, I think of myself much more broadly as human.

Now there’s a complicated one: do I identify as human? Hard not to, I suppose, meaning homo sapiens at least, what with the whole walking upright with opposable thumbs and speech centers thing, which might be a hubristic definition from the get-go; in fact maybe hubris is homo sapiens’ most defining characteristic. But seriously (and that was serious), what a messed-up species, with all its destruction and denial and animosity and manipulation, and on and on. I might identify as human, or this body as homo sapiens, there definitely seems to be a pattern here, but much like the whole White thing, that doesn’t mean I’m pleased about it or consider it to be fundamentally what I am or feel like I am on this planet.

So where does that leave me? I had a friend in high school, Dave Riley, ended up in lots of punk bands – he shows up briefly in Episode 10, “The Purpose of Rash Action” –  who once told me that his goal in life was to become a successful mammal. Somehow that always stuck with me. So when I first started considering the idea and act of identity, twenty-some years ago, that comment came to mind. I realized that whatever else I might be, I definitely identify as mammal. To wit:

·         I am pleased and comfortable being hirsute

·         I sniff things

·         I like to growl

·         I like nipples

·         I embrace emotional response, which is one thing mammals have that other animals, except perhaps birds, do not.

More than anything, it just feels right. I instantly like and relate to most mammals. I often feel I can empathize with them, and that they’re capable of empathizing with me. (Well, maybe not cows. They’re dumb and scary. But then again so are many humans.) It’s much the same with plants, but that’s another discussion for another time. Reptiles and fish? Not so much. Ever try to empathize with an iguana? Find one and gaze into its eyes and try to connect – and I’m sure there are some who feel they can and do. Rock on. But for me, mammals and the mammalian state hit the spot. When I consider it, that feels exactly what I am.

So one day in Bayoumi’s class, amidst a more fervent discussion of identity than usual, I raised my hand and interjected that I’d been thinking about it for a couple of months, and told the class what I’d come up with – more or less a quite abbreviated version of what you just heard. I was curious to hear what their reaction would be and how this, how I fit into the schema of other identities, so to speak. But that wasn’t to be, and I was met with disappointment when the entire class, including Bayoumi, responded by staring at me in silence for a long moment, then resumed their discussion as if I hadn’t spoken at all. They thought, as so many have since, that I was making a joke. 

I wasn’t.

Here’s the thing I didn’t think to say at the time (wish I had) and may not have recognized until later, though it was always fundamental to my rationale. Consider that basic sociological concept of in-groups and out-groups, initiated by Henri Tajfel and others in the 1970s (who also pioneered social identity theory). That is: we identify with various groups on different levels, starting, say, with family (like it or not). Within a given identification group, people have their complex human interactions – they nurture, they squabble, they fight like hell. But insult or attack that family from outside and chances are you’ll be in for a world of hurt. Say that’s a Jewish family, one that supports and disagrees with other Jewish families within their community, with perhaps more disagreement with other branches of Judaism; but attack Jews in general, a common pastime in America, and you’ll meet a united front. The broader the identification group, the more likely those within it are to empathize and the less likely they are to ostracize or marginalize each other. And within that group, their affiliations with more specific groups will likely be stronger. This helps to explain why, as a mammal, I tend to hold humans in general in my heart, despite our differences and the fact that they sometimes hit or maim or oppress or appall me; these things happen every day in the family to which we belong. So if it might position people to empathize more broadly with other people, I wholeheartedly encourage and espouse identifying as mammal.

If I may digress for a few moments, I think it’d be useful to look at the word “identity,” both its common meanings and its etymology. The meanings that we usually associate with “identity” at least in social situations are: 1) the distinguishing character or personality of an individual, and 2) the relation established by psychological identification. And the etymology – are you familiar? Most people aren’t and it’s pretty interesting. It comes to us from Middle French identité, from Late Latin identitat-, identitas, from Latin identidem meaning “repeatedly”. The latter is often construed as a contraction of the Latin “idem et idem,” literally, “same and same.” Note that there is some ongoing debate about other potential (though related) origins, but this iteration exists in most threads of discussion.

My take on this: In terms of our social and sociological usage of “identity,” this etymology can be read in a few different ways, and three in particular that stand out. The first and most obvious is in identification with a group, as in, “I relate to what we have in common; we are one in this.” So you’ll have to pardon me if I have a hard time identifying with a species that maims, destroys, and kills with stunning malice and indifference, however capable of compassion it can also be. Am I allowed to semi-identify, or do I need to break the species down into “people who connect” and “people who compete”? Oh wait, we’ve been there and we’re all both! But I might secretly do that anyway.

    The second and, I find, more interesting reading is the identification of another through what is perceived as a repeated quality or behavior, etc., i.e., we become to others what they find to be most re-cognizable in us. (What a nerd!) This can further be applied to personal recognition of one’s “self” (the third reading) as one “finds” and locates oneself in perspectives, reactions, and cognitive processes that repeatedly attract – often to the exclusion of (many) others that don’t for whatever reasons seem as relevant or engaging, that do not capture our attention. For instance, after a certain amount of life-experience, one might identify primarily as queer, rather than, say, Chinese-American, or whatever they had prior. In other words, “we” are repetition manifest.

Speaking of “we” and identity, let’s talk a moment about pronouns, especially that one shaped like a middle finger. I’ve brought this up before as well, and I’d like to take the topic just a teensy bit further.

Like I’ve said before, my pronouns are “he” and “they”. Okay, I’m done. End of subject.

But wait, I just said “I”. That’s another pronoun, and kind of a confusing one, in my experience. That’s because I don’t, genuinely, at base and essence, I don’t experience a static self. I don’t experience an “I”. I’m not sure if anyone else does, if anyone does, or maybe everybody does except me, but I do suspect that it’s very easy to convince yourself that you do. First of all, it’s in our language, or at least contemporary Western language. I mean, if we have to say “I” to convey an experience or perspective, then there must be an “I”, right? (I did this, I see that.) But honestly, perceptually, it just doesn’t make sense to me. I think it never has, and though it took me a long time to realize that was the case, I’ve been writing about it for many years. In fact the first poem in my first little book, The Orange Book from 1990, contains the line, “Of course there’s not quite you or me.” And I meant it. Basically I feel like a very different being, or entity, or whatever, when I’m with any particular person, say my mom, than when I’m with another, say Steve Arntson – blending and amplifying that blend like a song – than when I’m with a group of friends, or in a crowd, etc. And when I’m alone, when my body has no other in proximity, well that’s a goddamned circus, that’s a panoply, that’s when I feel like multitudes. It makes so much more sense to me to refer to myself as “we”, which is part of the reason that I like using “they”, besides the gender thing. But referring to myself as “we”, boy does that unnerve some people, and confuse even more. Language. And that’s right – language – our (somewhat) handy communication tool helps to reify the “I”, denotes the “I” as a tool within, a subtool in its pronoun submenu. And it’s a handy social tool as well, at least for the purpose of avoiding unnecessary confusion, or any more than we’d usually have attempting to communicate or be around each other. So I continue to use it, continue to refer to myself as “I”, much as I hold the term, the concept, in disregard. Also, fuck the Humanists.

Here’s another alternative to the pronoun “I” that I came up with a couple of years ago, only half in jest at most, if rather unpracticable. You might recognize it if you have my recent book Mammal.

~ ~ ~

First Person Nothing

O am going to try out a new word. O have been trying to think of a way to express a lack of singular self in language for some time, and it occurs to O that “O” is a not a bad signifier with which to start. “O” suggests a lack via its similarity to the number zero, though O think of it as having a shape like the letter and a sound like the letter while it is not the letter or the number but a word. In a way the association with zero is the main negative in the usage (pardon the pun), because O don’t really perceive the “self” as nothing or nonexistent; rather O just don’t experience it as in any way singular, bounded, or static. Own current view (I’m liking the use of “own” for the possessive) is that the common belief of the boundaries of self is brought about by the apparent if illusory limits to the body, which we often view as the outer tissue or skin. This comes to advantage however in the usage of “O”, which is represented vocally as an open sound created by the expulsion of breath, in effect dispersing parts of the body externally. Even more striking is its typographic form of a single, uninterrupted line with no apparent beginning or end, in continuous creation or motion as a Moebius strip. It too like the body might appear at first to delineate an area that might be called the “inside”, when it is just as well observed that the line is in fact, noting the redundancy, delineated, created, given existence and form by the area around it, on every side, those being both what we might see as the “inside” and the “outside” without which the line would not exist. Indeed is not the line, the circle of the line, as a conceptual and abstract form, insubstantial, imposed upon the substance which seems to hold it and which it seems to limit? It follows clearly that in actuality the circle bounds nothing, just as the concept of self, however handy a social tool (as well as one of oppression), bounds nothing, i.e., neither of them bound. The “I” then, as a concept that does not contain, is as insubstantial as that line, while in the actual world roams the boundless we, blending, swirling, shifting in countless cross-currents, shaping and unshaping, everywhere. O think O am going to like this pronoun a lot.

~ ~ ~

So yeah, that’s pretty high-concept but it amuses me and it’s another way of illustrating my point. I’ve never really tried to put it into practice, but if it appeals to you, please do. Still, if you prefer to see yourself as a singular and separate entity connected to or stuck in or manifest by your body that ends at the skin, if you’d rather not shift your world view dramatically right now or are just clinging to it desperately (wait – give me another minute), that’s okay, it’s all good, it’s… comfortable, like an old couch.

So, the body, whence all of this confusion springs. What a problem that thing is, and I’m not talking about how poorly it’s designed. The big enigma is how poorly it is defined. What do I mean? For instance, does it end at our skin, or does it include emanations? Sure it’s made of our organs, but what about all those microorganisms, our biomes, our symbiotic friends? No? What? Why not? Then we have the whole aura conundrum (at least on the West Coast), the electromagnetic field that leaks out of us, and which we take in. And our breath! We yank it in from outside us, so not part of the body, right? Until said body steals its oxygen and incorporates it. That same old poem, by the way, that I mentioned a couple of minutes ago also contains the line, “Of course our bodies have no size.” And I meant it. So another ongoing topic here. The body may be the biggest misnomer in the supposition and calculation of the “I”, the biggest trick, the biggest feint and manipulation – because our bodies, or our lumps of flesh if you will, can be manipulated, and are and have been throughout human history. This body, in short, this lump of flesh is how we can be controlled, is a primary tool and means of control by those who wish to do so. Want to oppress? Threaten the body. Want to indoctrinate? Seduce the body. Want strength in numbers? Embrace the body. But they say, don’t they, that you can subjugate the body, but you can’t subdue the person/spirit/soul/self, or whatever swarm word you like to use. They’re all trigger words to me, by the way, since they oppress and control us with the notion of dualism. Language. There it is again. So you’ve got this body bound to earth, and this spirit which inhabits it but is somehow free of earth, right? All based on the supposition that matter and energy are separate. How high school is that? And how is it, if our bodies are actually separate from each other, how can we blend and merge and amplify? Because our spirits do? What did I just say about matter and energy? All that seems like cognitive dissonance to me, and I find it comfortable to address by considering “each” of “us” as a locus. So when we’re in the same room and I’m looking at you, that’s what I’m thinking and that’s what I’m looking at: a locus.

I’m told by some that’s an odd way of seeing things, or at least people. Doesn’t seem so to me even though there’s further evidence that I am an oddly thinking person. Here’s a little example. Over the years I’ve been stopped a number of times in stores that I’ve frequented under suspicion of shoplifting, which I’ve almost never done (and not in those stores at all). Similarly, back in the day when I was hanging out in bars on amphetamines, I was asked quite a few times if I was either a cop or a drug dealer, when I was in fact just another pleasure-seeker. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been approached by various humans clearly in need of psychological succor, and I mean a LOT. I’ve had a person wrap themself around my leg crying as I was walking by down the street. I’ve had someone follow me for blocks really needing to know where they keep the dead people. It’s quite a list, actually. This is not an anti-mental illness rant, far from it—I’ve had many friends suffer from that, and family, and have challenges myself. That’s not what this is about. It’s about how much thought I’ve given to being what I’ve called in the past a “crazy magnet,” which lately I’ve rephrased as a “drama magnet,” whatever the hell that means. It’s about why people see me as things that I’m not, or in ways that I can’t figure out.

Allow me to use the shoplifting (or lack thereof) as an example. Going back to those accusations, including any number of times I’ve found myself followed around a big box store by security personnel, I’ve always thought that’s because I really don’t like shopping, whether for amusement (which I rarely do) or necessity. As a result of that, I think, I act a certain way in stores that most people don’t. For that matter, I don’t even like the system of commerce that we daily endure, the capitalist exploitation and denigration of everything. I’m pretty sure due to these tendencies I don’t look at merchandise in a “normal” manner either; rather I eye it with suspicion or disdain, and in turn I look suspicious. 

Now, I know that I’m not the only human who dislikes Capitalism, to say the least, and who might therefore have a suspect eye in regard to goods for sale. As for the bars (and elsewhere), I suspect that I often appear to be deconstructing people with my gaze [(even when I’m cruising)] – that’s my writer’s eye on autopilot, which often isn’t particularly conscious. But it gets noticed, and occasionally gets questioned. Still my thinking here goes beyond that. I’m pretty convinced that I look at, perceive, examine, and think of a great number of things, of experiences, of life, of matter and energy in a non-normative fashion, so in many situations I get pegged as a non-norm.

A non-norm – a placeholder word for non-normative, which itself is not an official or technical term at all. I will though discuss those in a minute.

Yet so far everything I’ve mentioned here could easily describe a great many people. And that’s true: many humans do look at people and things with a writer’s, a scientist’s, a photographer’s eye, that of critical thinkers, alt thinkers, even protesters, an examining eye that might make others wary of their motives. Just as many folks, or a good number at least, are wary of Late Capitalism, excessive production, corporate power, and unbridled growth wreaking havoc on the climate and resources and the sustainability of life, and so on, whose wariness might present itself in a public marketplace. Did I say wary? At this point, try over it! Hell, how about the millions of socially awkward and anxious people (including moi), with more sprouting daily (thanks, internet). Should we just label label label all these folks as non-norm and have done with it? That’s the thing – people who fall into certain normative behavioral ranges are more likely to see people as one thing or another, who find categorization to be a comfort zone as some do routine and ritual (and shopping). Even people who identify as non-norms, along with folks who’ve been taught that they’re lower in some invented hierarchy, i.e. oppressed, often tend to distinguish between the others (themselves) and those who other. There’s that in-group/out-group thing again. But who doesn’t do all of those things at some point, and isn’t it true, even though it’s a fairly non-norm thing to say, that everyone has a little non-norm in them somewhere, just like no one is ever just “conservative” or “liberal” (ahem) but some kind of blend? 

Look, there are a lot of terms, medical and not, which are used currently to describe these tendencies. Boxes, boxes, boxes. The most common, nonmedical umbrella terms are “neurodiversity”, under which one places people who are “neurotypical” and “neurodivergent”. (I love neuro-anything myself – it’s delicious!) The neurotypicals are usually considered to be those who function well in society, hold normative or conventional views, and are comforted by placing things in categories (which we’re doing right now).  Under the umbrella of neurodivergent, those who categorize like to place many types of people – those on the autism spectrum (often known as differently-abled), anxiety disorders, mental health conditions, ADHD, the list goes on. 

Sometimes I wonder which of these groups I fit into best. I’ve never been diagnosed with anything more than depressive anxiety or anxious depression (I forget which), sometimes more severe than others; but remember, in other respects I don’t look at objects as potential possessions (not even my instruments and favorite tea glass), and I see my gender as non-numerical, myself as a “we”, and you as a locus. I also have a very low capacity to engage smoothly in conversation in groups of strangers (and sometimes groups of friends), meaning that I can be fucking awkward, though I’m able to communicate very well given a script to recite. Is that typical? Maybe I’m neuro-atypical, maybe that’s my flavor of non-norm. On top of that I also lack three drives which I’m fairly certain are common in other males and people in general: a drive to penetrate (see again my sexuality rant in “Corrode to Joy”), a drive to compete (though I have a strong one to cooperate), and a drive to worship (as in humans or theoretical gods). (I respect and honor those of achievement, by the way, but worship? I’m not even sure what that means.) And I’m sure there are others who share one or all of those propensities. So if not differently-abled, I may be at least differently-driven. And as I’m sure you can guess, I don’t really care what you call me, but I can’t say that I feel neurotypical at all – I don’t identify as neurotypical because I have no repeated experience to suggest so and a lot of experience to suggest not. At the same time, I don’t really see them as flip sides either, and it’s that very neuro-atypicality which leads me to posit that our neuro-flora are as much on a spectrum as anything, to the degree that true neurotypicals may be in a minority or nonexistent. Just as I’m sure that there must be some (perhaps many) folks who are uncomfortable with or just don’t understand their divergent or atypical sides and do their utmost to hide it, even from themselves. Then there must also be those who slide glibly from one to the other, or who dwell between with ease. In this way, that neuro-spectrum, that vast and incandescent neuro-rainbow might not be as visible to those who need to restrict their focus to wavelengths they find for whatever reasons less disruptive, which, again, could be any of us at any given time. 

So am I   how I   see things?

            Enough with the “I”!

                        What did I just say?

Okay, so might this locus be defined as or by a perspective?

I don’t see that, but a perspective might emerge from a locus…and merge with another….

Still, it (or I) can’t be defined (there’s that word again) because “to define”, in the Latin definire, means “to complete or finalize a boundary” – and as I’ve already said, this locus, these loci have no boundaries. So, try to define me. Just try.

However, the Latin prefix “de-“ can also indicate negation (rather than completion), so in theory de-finire could also mean the removal of a boundary… And this is where everything starts to dissolve and I drive you mad – so let’s get off this train of thought right here… [whew…choo-choo…Bye-bye…]

…and shift our attention one last time from all this seeing back to a last little gaze – at the eye. Yes, that same eye that in my case can appear so odd or off at times to others. That precious glob of jelly dangling from the front of your brain through which much of the world seems to enter our lives, and may have a lot to do with how we shape our concept of the world and of how our “selves” fit into it. That lovely but limited-capacity sense organ.

I’m aware that statement is sightist and that there are many who cannot see, differently-abled folk who were born unsighted and whose lives are whole regardless. Those who have lost their sight may have a gamut of perspectives; some have adjusted, some not – and all respect to both groups, who take in the world in other manners. I’m not sure how well I’d do but it’s definitely been on my mind. You see, I had a scare about my vision this past week.

It’s a curious coincidence that I thought of the title for this episode a few weeks ago: “Aye, I, Eye”. Then just as I was finishing up the previous one “Resistance Mixtape” and preparing to begin writing this one, I noticed a tiny black dot like a burned-out pixel that wouldn’t leave my field of vision. I’ve had a lot of floaters for a long time and this wasn’t one. I figured that I just had eye strain from staring at all those squiggly audio lines running across the screen. But once I’d finished (and it was rather late), I started seeing streaks and flashes of light whenever I moved my right eye. I had a paid gig in a recording studio the next morning and needed to sleep, which I figured would make everything better. It did not, and in the morning I had a worse symptom in the form of a large, amorphous blob inside my right eye that was drifting around and obscuring my vision. But I had a long busy day that I couldn’t cancel, so went about my business, still hoping it might clear up. It did not. So I called the advice nurse, who asked me about a hundred questions. Never a good sign. He couldn’t diagnose over the phone but determined that I’d probably be okay until the first available ophthalmology appointment four days later – but warned me that if this or this or this or this happened, to go straight to the emergency room. All of which left me sitting here for four days wondering if I might go blind. And it may sound weak, or entitled, but boy do I love seeing.

I didn’t go blind, nor am I, but I am kinda mad that they never taught us in aging school about things like a vitreous detachment, which might be dramatic but happens all the time. Oh wait – there isn’t an aging school! Well there should be. Turns out this is a common and benign condition (that you probably already know about but I sure didn’t) in which that brilliant eye-jelly (the vitreous) gets a smidge tired over time and pulls away from the retina, that big bunch of seeing nerves in the back of the eye, causing little lightning and floater storms. The docs do watch it for a few weeks to make sure that the retina doesn’t tear (bad), but otherwise the only downside is a cloudy occlusion that drifts across your vision – for the rest of your life.

Oh – and the fear. Not so much of blindness, though that worry had me crawling the (very visible) walls for a few days. No – oddly and maybe silly as it sounds, that big new blob and constant companion drifting across my field of vision – which I’ve named Melvin, by the way – somehow Melvin reminds me, with every skitter and bob, of my mortality. No kidding. It’s like a little advertisement that says, This Too Shall Pass, Fucker. It says, The End Is Near (Like Right Behind Your Cornea). It says, Got a little eye-rot, bub? I don’t think I’m afraid of dying per se – I might be afraid of falling off a cliff or (much worse) drowning [shudder]. But the state of being dead, or the body ceasing function, doesn’t bother me so much. And I could use the extra rest. It’s the idea of not having enough life, or enough time to finish making enough things so that I feel, I don’t know, happy? Fulfilled? That really gets me. I experienced this one other time, musta been about 2008, when I had a bad GI bleed in the kitchen of my shared apartment, fainted slowly to the floor feeling very sick at both ends and crawled in a barely conscious state to the bathroom where I blacked out and shit myself big time (and ended up a few days in a hospital bed). And despite being very confused by the whole thing, I can remember thinking just as I went bye-bye, I’m not finished… And now that I think about it, in his interview with me last winter for Episode 21 (“How Artists Survive in America – Part One”), filmmaker Ken Paul Rosenthal recalled thinking those very words – “I need to finish my project first” –  on several occasions when he was on the verge of committing suicide – and the thought stopped him from doing so. How curious. And I wonder how common that specific fear is in regard to dying, rather than, say, a fear of one’s self, however one conceives it, no longer existing.

So the body, really an incredibly, almost immeasurably fast biochemical reaction with the illusion of solidity (until you shit yourself), here and gone, as far as the eye is concerned, or the ear, or the hand – which are, please note, instances of the flesh sensing itself, which is kind of a tautology, right, like eating your own head…or something. Of course the senses sense themselves. But as some guy once said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, dear listener, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (I forget who.) So do I sense this locus I keep talking about? Yes! Why else would I be talking about it? Do I sense it with my eyes, ears, hands, nose, tongue? Not typically. But atypically, divergently, my locus, my “I” feels like weather – a pressure system here, an adjacent one there, mixing or reflecting, others over there, a downdraft, the cooling of night, condensation settling, or sudden shifts, big shifts, much combining – like a tornado maybe, swirled in a crowd, yeah that’s me, all right – that’s we – picking up and tossing out splintered wood, bits of metal, plant life, creatures, soil, each other, until the burden is heavy, vigor wanes, we calm down and dissipate and move on in various directions, mingling and re-mingling with more of the same until…well, let’s not get too caught up in the physics of it, this is an analogy after all. Or is it?

Rather let’s merge and mingle, have our time, let our loci mingle and ricochet and create new patterns, new weather, let the fields that we are cavort closely and distant and in currents, in atmosphere, down mountains, through cities, over deltas, in the vast forests and meadows of Saskatchewan.

Well, that’s about it for me. At least for now.

How about you?

This has been Episode 30 covering Weeks 45 and 46 of My 12-Month Video Fast, along with the best explanation I can give you for where these missives are coming from.

There’ll be three more episodes in this podcast, including the finale on May 31. The next episode will drop on Saturday, May 3, and as I’ve been threatening, might actually lighten things up a bit, maybe even inject a little laughter into the conversation.

Thank you for listening! It’s been a pleasure getting to know us a little better.