Samson Vs.
Sometimes I forget that the original point of this journal was to post random scribblings that I don't care to polish. Here's one of them.
Last night, online, I saw a girl with a split lip and a bruised arm. The picture was framed to show her injuries, which she'd received hours earlier from a violent boyfriend. Before reading her story, I thought she was a camwhore. The cropping looked pornographic, the split-lip like a sneer. And in that 2-of-3 context, the bruise looked erotic. I don't mean that analytically or objectively -- it looked erotic to me.
Last night I read the tweets and other contraband journalism of the Iranian Revolution (which name I use in baseless faith; it is ongoing as I write, and history may paint it as merely a riot). I felt weak and overprivileged. I read the account of a man who'd had 15 hours of sleep in 4 days and was dodging the government's death grip on media. He, in turn, wrote of a medical student who was treating the wounded in the streets. He used Twitter to ask for advice on removing a metal shard from someone's hard palate. That question is not answered in Common Sense. Maybe it should have been.
Last night, I learned that a friend is in some kind of pain or trouble. She isn't in a position to talk about it. She says it's nothing; given the baseline she's working from, I'm not so sure. I wanted to help, but not to push. Now have a vague appointment at some nebulous future date to listen to an abridged version of whatever happened to her. That's her choice, not mine; I'd go to her now if I could, and I'd go running. But then, I can, and I haven't.
Last night, I read the letter sent to Jackie Robinson threatening to lynch him if he played a game in Cincinnati. Cincinnati is named (at second-hand) after Cincinnatus, who was famously appointed dictator of Rome, then resigned his power as soon as his service was done. A statue in Cincinnati depicts Cincinnatus extending the fasces in his hand. He's returning them, sure; but he's still holding them. Cincinnatus was a staunch opponent of the plebeians. It's not clear where he would have stood on Jackie Robinson, or on the use of paramilitary and censorship to terrorize protesters into submission. Jackie Robinson played despite the threats.
So:
Last night, I dreamt that my friend had been attacked. It was a physical attack by some kind of terrorist group opposing her position on something. She was keeping it quiet to avoid publicity for her enemies' cause. But it got in the paper, and in a picture, I saw the bruise on her wrist. Yes, her wrist -- as though my brain thinks I'm stupid and need to have symbolism spelled out for me. I awoke from the dream with a sense of power (which soon waned). It wasn't that I did anything glorious in the dream... notably, I didn't fight the thugs or protect my friend from them. In fact, I remember almost nothing about my own role in the dream. What I felt as strength, I think, was just the momentary release of a heavy burden. It is 9:30 AM and I am picking it up again for another day.
Samson was gifted by God with great strength, but he was a Nazirite, so that if his hair was ever cut, he would lose God's blessing. I was raised in the Pentecostal church, where women are forbidden from cutting their hair -- to a Pentecostal, for a woman to trim her hair is literally an offense punishable by eternal damnation. I spent my childhood in awe of the power of scissors. In a universe of infinitesimally fine gradations, of probabilistic physics, of blurry lines and of an epistemological abyss underlying every experience, here was an absolute: the moment that a hair is cut, God's presence is withdrawn. Samson goes from a hero to a tragic figure not when he is shaved bald, but, it seems, the moment of the razor's first cut.
That's all myth. But truly, sometimes even a single cut makes all the difference. A single censor saps the strength of a nation. A single day of tyranny debases an eternity of freedom. A single swing snaps the fasces. A single wound, and the tangible world overruns the one in our imaginations.
So what is that decisive cut that robs me of my strength when I awaken each morning? It's my silent assent to deny something I've dreamt about, and thus to give up the power that tumbles pillars. In action and finally in thought, I deny those half-conscious wills to fight, to run, to reach, that define a person. I will not take to the streets today nor press the issue nor taste the copper kiss from the girl on the far side of the photograph . Every night the truth returns; every morning I trim it back.
To do less than we dream is to be less than ourselves. But what else is there? Revolution only, and the bruises it leaves.
Last night, online, I saw a girl with a split lip and a bruised arm. The picture was framed to show her injuries, which she'd received hours earlier from a violent boyfriend. Before reading her story, I thought she was a camwhore. The cropping looked pornographic, the split-lip like a sneer. And in that 2-of-3 context, the bruise looked erotic. I don't mean that analytically or objectively -- it looked erotic to me.
Last night I read the tweets and other contraband journalism of the Iranian Revolution (which name I use in baseless faith; it is ongoing as I write, and history may paint it as merely a riot). I felt weak and overprivileged. I read the account of a man who'd had 15 hours of sleep in 4 days and was dodging the government's death grip on media. He, in turn, wrote of a medical student who was treating the wounded in the streets. He used Twitter to ask for advice on removing a metal shard from someone's hard palate. That question is not answered in Common Sense. Maybe it should have been.
Last night, I learned that a friend is in some kind of pain or trouble. She isn't in a position to talk about it. She says it's nothing; given the baseline she's working from, I'm not so sure. I wanted to help, but not to push. Now have a vague appointment at some nebulous future date to listen to an abridged version of whatever happened to her. That's her choice, not mine; I'd go to her now if I could, and I'd go running. But then, I can, and I haven't.
Last night, I read the letter sent to Jackie Robinson threatening to lynch him if he played a game in Cincinnati. Cincinnati is named (at second-hand) after Cincinnatus, who was famously appointed dictator of Rome, then resigned his power as soon as his service was done. A statue in Cincinnati depicts Cincinnatus extending the fasces in his hand. He's returning them, sure; but he's still holding them. Cincinnatus was a staunch opponent of the plebeians. It's not clear where he would have stood on Jackie Robinson, or on the use of paramilitary and censorship to terrorize protesters into submission. Jackie Robinson played despite the threats.
So:
Last night, I dreamt that my friend had been attacked. It was a physical attack by some kind of terrorist group opposing her position on something. She was keeping it quiet to avoid publicity for her enemies' cause. But it got in the paper, and in a picture, I saw the bruise on her wrist. Yes, her wrist -- as though my brain thinks I'm stupid and need to have symbolism spelled out for me. I awoke from the dream with a sense of power (which soon waned). It wasn't that I did anything glorious in the dream... notably, I didn't fight the thugs or protect my friend from them. In fact, I remember almost nothing about my own role in the dream. What I felt as strength, I think, was just the momentary release of a heavy burden. It is 9:30 AM and I am picking it up again for another day.
Samson was gifted by God with great strength, but he was a Nazirite, so that if his hair was ever cut, he would lose God's blessing. I was raised in the Pentecostal church, where women are forbidden from cutting their hair -- to a Pentecostal, for a woman to trim her hair is literally an offense punishable by eternal damnation. I spent my childhood in awe of the power of scissors. In a universe of infinitesimally fine gradations, of probabilistic physics, of blurry lines and of an epistemological abyss underlying every experience, here was an absolute: the moment that a hair is cut, God's presence is withdrawn. Samson goes from a hero to a tragic figure not when he is shaved bald, but, it seems, the moment of the razor's first cut.
That's all myth. But truly, sometimes even a single cut makes all the difference. A single censor saps the strength of a nation. A single day of tyranny debases an eternity of freedom. A single swing snaps the fasces. A single wound, and the tangible world overruns the one in our imaginations.
So what is that decisive cut that robs me of my strength when I awaken each morning? It's my silent assent to deny something I've dreamt about, and thus to give up the power that tumbles pillars. In action and finally in thought, I deny those half-conscious wills to fight, to run, to reach, that define a person. I will not take to the streets today nor press the issue nor taste the copper kiss from the girl on the far side of the photograph . Every night the truth returns; every morning I trim it back.
To do less than we dream is to be less than ourselves. But what else is there? Revolution only, and the bruises it leaves.