Painted Face

Wednesday = karaoke night.  Karaoke, or at least singing, provides me with a catharsis that is unparalleled in other mediums, except perhaps dance or skating. So naturally, after being at home all day on my day off with my car in the shop, I wanted to go to karaoke and release a little tension.  In past posts, I may or may not have alluded to my mating crisis, which has resulted in my habitual use of a cosmetic mask and wearing heels.  Today, I decided to reach into a purer, more ascetic self, and take a subtle approach to my dress for karaoke night.  As I looked in the mirror, I felt incomplete with my makeup on.  And I was horrified.  I have never in my life felt as though I needed makeup to look "beautiful," yet tonight, feeling so inadequate, I compulsively brushed mascara onto my eyelashes before leaving my apartment because I needed something on my face in order for me to depart. How have I come to feel this way?

Clearly, this sense of inadequacy is problematic. I pride myself on a certain liberal level of asceticism in my life.  I crave the purity of uninfluenced humanity, yet I am subject to the "laws" of American society, specifically middle class, suburban white culture. Being of mixed racial decent, I have always felt a cultural disconnect with my peers - I've never been Hispanic enough, nor white enough. Couple this cultural barrier with the interpersonal barrier I've always felt with my peers that has yet to be identified, and you've got one seriously isolated lady.  Of course, as social animals, we all seek to be connected with our peers on several levels - utility, friendship, love -  all of which I tend to have difficulty acquiring/sustaining.  Perhaps the blaring messages I've been raised with within my own family, and of course, in this overbearingly patriarchal society, have caused me to harp specifically on the love/sex category of relationships, so far as to the point where I derive a significant portion of my self-esteem from my ability to mate.

As anyone who knows me will attest, I am the least potent sexual agent I know (for several reasons which I won't get into now). Despite my self-professed reluctance to even allow myself to get into love/sex relationships, I still seek the approval of heterosexual males. This reality is unfortunate because my professional situation will forever entrap me in the cultural demographic in which I currently reside and in which I am repeatedly rejected by males. I do not fit the bill of "attractiveness" for these people.  I suppose I value my ability to mate because it predicts the degree to which I can procreate, a quality which for whatever reason I apparently value significantly - the only way in which my life will be truly meaningful is if I propagate the species (even though I don't understand/support the perpetual propagation of an existence whose meaning I can never grasp).

Call me the victim of covert and overt patriarchy because I equate my self-worth to my ability to have babies. In the most basic biological sense, that is my only worth.  I feel this so strongly that all "redeeming" qualities about me - generosity, compassion, limitless caring for others - seem irrelevant.  I frequently ask myself, what does any of my personality matter if I can't even get a man to look at me to learn about it? I find myself resigned to the reality that I will never attract more than a fleeting intoxicated attraction of a man.  Superficially, one would think this would fulfill the requirement of my self-efficacy; however, the distorted perception of hormone-driven men does not faze me.  Deep down, I want to be valued for my entire self and not be treated as a Rent-a-Vag.  My ultimate problem, it would appear, is my locus of control - it's external.  If self-validation actually came from myself, maybe I wouldn't have this problem; however, unfortunately, as a social animal, some portion of my self-worth derives from others' opinions of me. Ostensibly, I find myself to possess excellent qualities, but my apparent unattractiveness to men really deters me and prevents them from learning who I am.

A friend of mine frequently tells me my problem is that I seek social interaction in all the wrong places, namely the bars of suburban white America, and recommends I expand my socialization to more diverse venues.  Maybe she's right.  Maybe varying location would result in different responses - but to some degree, I can't help but question the steadfast nature of humanity despite cultural differences. I guess only trial would reveal the answer to this question.

Ultimately, I experience difficulty reconciling my own proclivity to embrace others independent of demographics or physical attributes with others' rejection of me based on physical attributes. To overcompensate, I've adopted a method of dress/personal grooming to mimic those around me, in hopes that would increase my odds.  It hasn't worked and yet I clutch to colored powder as though my life depends on it. I abhor this self I have become. I have never been and never want to be this automaton of superficiality. I suppose the next step for me is to attempt to change my environment and trial that option. We'll see if I'll have more success.

-M.E.

Entropy.

In The Republic, Plato metaphorically illustrates enlightenment.  Well, folks, I think I've been irreversibly introduced to illumination. It's impossible to define those moments that awaken us, or what about those moments spark us to animation; however, through a confluence of events, the urge to grab life by the cajones has reinvigorated my passion: el fuego mio. Something about this evolved frontal lobe has provoked me into a neo-Grecian philosophical path; i.e. the pursuit of intellectual excellence and/or realization of human potential.  I suppose the way this plays out for me is ever rigorous philosophizing.

Camus asks us why Sisyphus is happy despite his tedious sentence: roll it up, it rolls down, roll it up, it rolls down.  The image of his smiling face as he carries on with this monotonous endeavor evokes an ostensibly macabre feeling akin to that of a blissful afterlife in heaven.  I'll elaborate on the macabre before I deconstruct the joyful rolling.  For me, the prospect of eternal bliss conjures up such dread in the pit of my stomach, I cannot taxonomize it in any of the languages in which I am semi- to fully fluent.  It is impossible for me to conceptualize feeling bliss fleetingly, never mind as an eternal state. Hayzoos.  What is bliss in the absence of utter tragedy and depression?  The range of emotions is on a dichotomous continuum. Both must exist in order for either to exist (the dependency dilemma of life, as it were).

So there's hell, you devilish sophists retort; the existence of a hell in which residents are continuously tortured serves as the yin to heaven's yang.  All right, I'll consider it on an aggregate level; however, I am not inclined to believe that in either vacation land, each individual feels only the extremity of the ends of the spectrum; either bliss or sheer misery.  Unless human consciousness deteriorates to utter simplicity in the alleged afterlife, experiencing only one extreme of emotion is impossible, and furthermore, seems torturous, if individuals are to have a singularly miserable or ecstatic demeanor with no cognizance of the opposite emotion.  It would certainly strengthen the case for fear of damnation if the damned are in misery only because they know of the absence of joy.  Is that a part of damnation, perhaps, to endure a human consciousness with its inherent flux of emotion?  The reward of heaven, then, to lose the capability of feeling sadness?  If so, send me to hell.  I'd rather experience the organic complexity of humanity than be reduced an automaton in death.  What kind of reward is that?

So back to Sisyphus.  Let's assume that he possesses his full human consciousness in this quagmire of purgatory and he hasn't deteriorated to simplicity.  So he's rolling the rock up the hill, it rolls down, lather, rinse, repeat.  Oh, and before I forget, let's also elucidate the fact that Sisyphus' sport is a penalty from the Greek gods (i.e. effectively, this is his hell).  So Camus claims that we must picture Sisyphus happy.  Oh, happiness!  What an elusively defined word.  So for all intents and purposes, Camus seems to be defining happiness as some force which propels us to sustain our own lives and not commit suicide (although, I am unsure if suicide exists/is allowed in Sisyphus' mythological manifestation).  Camus claims that Sisyphus takes onus of his fate, claiming his rock and his task as his own, which gives him the strength to continue his rolling and live.  Sisyphus' sense of agency is ironically life-affirming, given his eternal "damnation."  Actual or, more likely, perceived control over one's destiny, even if that destiny is fixed (rolling a rock for eternity or dying), seems to be the most valuable power one can assume.  Why?

Late toddlers and early school-age children are at a level of egocentric cognition that leads them to believe they are solely responsible for actions in the environment around them.  A popular example in my world of pediatrics is when a sibling of a sick child believes he/she did something unfavorable, which led to the demise of his/her ailing kin.  Psychologists purport that we evolve from this egocentricity with age and I agree, to an extent.  While we may evolve to objectivity, we are still restrained by individual, impenetrable psyches that perceive the world through strictly human senses.  Furthermore, despite our cognizance of the world around us and though we are capable of altruism, we can never truly, fully escape our own egocentricity. 

We perceive the world through human senses and reason and, egocentrically, believe that that way we perceive the world is the way the world is.  So, then, we are confounded when the world behaves irrationally, illogically.  How can this be?  Well, because God/pick your entity made it so and that omnipotent, omniscient, fully actualized form of humanity only bestowed upon us limited free will and limited reason to perceive the world.  Of course.  Or maybe our existence does not necessitate the existence of the world/universe and human perception is an incomplete/unreliable interpretation of existence. You decide. But our perception is all we've got, so I guess we've got to shake what our momma gave us.

Egocentricity is what sustains human life, ultimately.  The ceaseless inherent affirmation that the world depends on our existence and our biological drive to propagate our species is a testament to our egocentricity.  What would happen if we had no control over our lives?  Why is the threat of becoming a puppet so frightening?  I haven't quite come to the bottom of it myself.  What I can speculate at this juncture is that as evolved beings, we have learned that we certainly can control certain aspects of our lives.  In fact, we try to control everything in our lives because in at least one instance we have acted and it would appear that our actions have direct results on our lives.  However, our agency, it would seem, is limited for whatever reason/non-reason.  We have all experienced an actual or perceived loss of control, and then we usually try to retroactively give ourselves control over the situation even when we seem completely illogical.  If I hadn't gone to the store, I never would have gotten into this car accident.  If I hadn't invited you to the party, you never would have driven home drunk.  If I hadn't stolen a cookie from the cookie jar when my mom told me not to, my brother never would have gotten sick.  (Sound familiar?)

So Sisyphus takes ownership of the actions in his life that have led him to this point and he rolls the rock in joy, Camus wants us to believe.  The metaphor here is evidently the repetitious way in which we reproduce, reproduce, reproduce, generations pass, but to what end?  We all die, anyway.  What's the point of continuing this monotony?  What is the meaning of all of this? (You might guess that a blissful afterlife is not my desire end or motivator).  I have not quite conceptualized Camus' argument that Sisyphus must be happy because he accepts full responsibility for and control over his fate (i.e. fate is controlled by humanity, not by any divine entity/entities).  Being in control makes him happy/not want to kill himself, although he still feels the range of emotions.  I would say that we aren't fully potent in controlling our own lives, especially because I contend that the world is more complex, or perhaps simple, than our human reason.   I guess, for a long time, that acceptance of loss of control frightened me because if we don't have agency, we have to acknowledge the fact that the world does not operate according to our rules and that maybe, just maybe, the world doesn't exist because we're in it.  I suppose that would make it a lot more difficult to survive/sustain ourselves when we acknowledge our own global insignificance/meaninglessness.

It looks like Sisyphus took a page out of the toddler's book and decided that egocentricity was the way to go - "the gods didn't make me roll this rock, it's my fault I'm rolling this rock."  I can't really reconcile this logic within the context of the myth, but I appreciate the metaphor, nevertheless.  So what do I take from this?  Why do I even bring up this myth?  Well, I suppose I'm a bit of an egocentricist (?) and, barring cerebral damage, I can at least control my own logic and reason.  I am subject to my own egocentricity, in a sense, but I do acknowledge that the world does not exist because I am in it.  I'm as insignificant as an inanimate object.  How do I have the strength to go on?  Twenty-one laughs a day make the woes go away.  Maybe.  Or maybe I exemplify Sisyphus in recognizing that this life is all I've got, so I must as well make the most of it.  I'll experience travails along the way but the glory of this consciousness is the prospect of intermittent joy.

Signing off,

Midnight Enchantress