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From an ongoing dialogue ... Sent: 11/16/2000 10:46 PM
Right now I am quite cynical ... it seems to me that the depth at which most of the young people I know are experiencing their emotions is mostly glitter and sheen and that it is ultimately shallow - which is not to say that they do not feel crushing insecurity, paralyzing despair, or discover that the burden of their feelings is unbearable and commit suicide - But it seems like they are severely bandwidth limited because the growth of their hearts comes AFTER their experience, like the development of the immune system follows the illness, and that its growth is actually the core part of maturity - which is to say that it appears that there is very little real depth to their experience of their experiences. I see lots of passion and fury and jumping to conclusions without running the whole course, lots of opinions reached without reading the whole book - lots of loud voices in the place of articulation or nuance - and of course, lots of loud music without real musicianship. The WTO riots seem emblematic of what I am talking about. Nothing was really accomplished except some people got to yell and scream and kick and some other people got pretty seriously hurt, but the same corporations still rule the world and their GM organisms and fashion statements are still proliferating wildly. "I'm not asking in a critical way, i just really want to know what you're looking for." she asked. "Well, " I replied, "when I was talking to her yesterday, she said something so final and yet said it so nonchalantly and I realized I was feeling the gash in my chest reopening and feeling this vast river of heartblood pouring over the falls onto the floor and feeling my limbs draining and my extremities growing cold - my soul going into shock - and yet I was certain from the tone and cadence of her voice that she was NOT feeling anything like that at all." And so I know I can answer that question: yes, I do know what I want. I know EXACTLY what I want. I really want to release that huge river of feeling to flow from the mile-wide gash that I know I can unzip in my chest, but I know that I do not merely want to die here alone feeling it spilling out over the floor. I want it to pour from my gash into yours - from my heart into your heart, and I need to feel the pressure of it as it fills your heart - like blowing into a rubber glove or making a balloon animal - and then I need to feel the waves of love reflect back from the farthest reaches of your experience and rush back into my heart and fill me almost to bursting. Back and forth back and forth. Until we really know one another. At which point, and I don't know if that is going to take days or weeks or months or years, I assume we could put our clothes back on and continue with our lives without having to feel loss or post-partum depression or the need to feel 6 weeks or 6 months or 6 years of shock and despair - or even have anything to cry about at all. |