It's been a while since I've been "up north." This time of year, the last four miles to the dirt track into the cabin remains unplowed, and travel there can only be on foot, on snowmobile or on skis; but this year the snow has been too late. Normally, we go up with our son for the snowmobile trails that go on for hundreds of miles, but now, with only 7 or so inches on the ground, it is not worth it. Next week will have several feet more they say, but we have other places to go, and after that, it's back to school.
But that's all right. The cabin to me has become a solitary affair, and the winter visits mostly for family amusement. It is the solitary that I need. This is not because of a lack of emotional attachment or any kind of inter-emotional turmoil, but because it is only in solitude that I can be me. Other people make me into something "other." With some, I can feel stupid, with others, brilliant, not because of anything said but because of perception of the other's perception, which helps create "me." I am not sure if this is universally shared, but the political process shows that it probably is; clearly, some politicians on the big stage make many of us feel better about ourselves, while others less so. It is the former who win, not because they really are better, but because they make us feel better - somehow. That is their gift, and it works.
What, though, is this "me" that I find? In Margee Kerr's Scream (which got better since my last posting on it), she shows clinically that we all fit into a few categories, or types, of reactors to stimuli.
What type we are depends on a complex blend of inheritance and experience, but in the end, we respond to intense stimuli beyond our conscious efforts. We are nearly puppets to our bio-chemical and experiential backgrounds, although we can, with effort, overcome. In her works with fear, Kerr wishes to find ways that our grinding fears, of death or violent experiences or tight spaces or hospitals (and so on) can be mitigated so that we might live more comfortable lives, free from the dictator that is fear. How we do this is to confront fear in non-life threatening venues, such as horror houses, bungee jumping and the like, where certain experiences are remade into something less than triggers for paralyzing terror.
However, the therapeutic and individual desires do not always match (this is my observation, not hers). While she talks of working fear towards the good, most people in one way or another seek out fear for entirely different reasons. Kerr claims that we do this to court the dangerous and to break taboos. She briefly mentions odd sexual practices, like bondage and discipline, in which some seek to explore different dimensions of the self. And it is widely known that private sexual fantasies often stray into the forbidden zone, not so much because we wish to really experience them, but that we wish to know what that "forbidden" is like - in the safe space of fantasy.
But we often seek out the dangerous or unpleasant for reasons beyond safe therapy, and in regions that are not safe. We do it because we crave experience.
"We" "us" "me" "I"- what is this being that craves experience? What, for that matter, is the being in Kerr's biochemical machine that has free will - that is able to escape, at least to a degree, the reflexive actions that so influence the mind? Is it the "me" I find away from everyone else at the cabin? If so, what is this me? Could I really define this solitary me without reference to others? For when I think of this me, he is neither good nor bad, brave or cowardly, hot tempered or cool. He simply is a human being. As such, he wants his comforts but also his thrills. He seeks to explore. He gradually takes more and more risks, longer adventures into the woods or the waters. He is, alone like this, an "everyone" of no specific color, except that which is human.
Where, then, are we? Are we in our phobias, in our families, in our religion or our bodies? Of course, yes, but there is also this human thing that seeks experience, even fear, for no other reason but experience. That, I think, is where we are when stripped down and on the edge of the wilderness. Here is not found the fabled Self of the mystics, but the elemental human, who knows somehow that he is on a journey. He knows that he must explore. Where and why he does not always know, but it is this impulse that brings us all together under the human umbrella. It is this, I think, that most fundamentally defines us at the edge of our normal being - the being who wants to go beyond where and what he is - to and beyond fear, to something far far off that calls. FK
But that's all right. The cabin to me has become a solitary affair, and the winter visits mostly for family amusement. It is the solitary that I need. This is not because of a lack of emotional attachment or any kind of inter-emotional turmoil, but because it is only in solitude that I can be me. Other people make me into something "other." With some, I can feel stupid, with others, brilliant, not because of anything said but because of perception of the other's perception, which helps create "me." I am not sure if this is universally shared, but the political process shows that it probably is; clearly, some politicians on the big stage make many of us feel better about ourselves, while others less so. It is the former who win, not because they really are better, but because they make us feel better - somehow. That is their gift, and it works.
What, though, is this "me" that I find? In Margee Kerr's Scream (which got better since my last posting on it), she shows clinically that we all fit into a few categories, or types, of reactors to stimuli.
What type we are depends on a complex blend of inheritance and experience, but in the end, we respond to intense stimuli beyond our conscious efforts. We are nearly puppets to our bio-chemical and experiential backgrounds, although we can, with effort, overcome. In her works with fear, Kerr wishes to find ways that our grinding fears, of death or violent experiences or tight spaces or hospitals (and so on) can be mitigated so that we might live more comfortable lives, free from the dictator that is fear. How we do this is to confront fear in non-life threatening venues, such as horror houses, bungee jumping and the like, where certain experiences are remade into something less than triggers for paralyzing terror.
However, the therapeutic and individual desires do not always match (this is my observation, not hers). While she talks of working fear towards the good, most people in one way or another seek out fear for entirely different reasons. Kerr claims that we do this to court the dangerous and to break taboos. She briefly mentions odd sexual practices, like bondage and discipline, in which some seek to explore different dimensions of the self. And it is widely known that private sexual fantasies often stray into the forbidden zone, not so much because we wish to really experience them, but that we wish to know what that "forbidden" is like - in the safe space of fantasy.
But we often seek out the dangerous or unpleasant for reasons beyond safe therapy, and in regions that are not safe. We do it because we crave experience.
"We" "us" "me" "I"- what is this being that craves experience? What, for that matter, is the being in Kerr's biochemical machine that has free will - that is able to escape, at least to a degree, the reflexive actions that so influence the mind? Is it the "me" I find away from everyone else at the cabin? If so, what is this me? Could I really define this solitary me without reference to others? For when I think of this me, he is neither good nor bad, brave or cowardly, hot tempered or cool. He simply is a human being. As such, he wants his comforts but also his thrills. He seeks to explore. He gradually takes more and more risks, longer adventures into the woods or the waters. He is, alone like this, an "everyone" of no specific color, except that which is human.
Where, then, are we? Are we in our phobias, in our families, in our religion or our bodies? Of course, yes, but there is also this human thing that seeks experience, even fear, for no other reason but experience. That, I think, is where we are when stripped down and on the edge of the wilderness. Here is not found the fabled Self of the mystics, but the elemental human, who knows somehow that he is on a journey. He knows that he must explore. Where and why he does not always know, but it is this impulse that brings us all together under the human umbrella. It is this, I think, that most fundamentally defines us at the edge of our normal being - the being who wants to go beyond where and what he is - to and beyond fear, to something far far off that calls. FK
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