The New Metaphysics

If, on a whim, as Laura did all those years ago, you look at me and declare: ‘say something profound’, I might have very little to offer. I tend to freeze and flail when asked to perform to order. Of course, on the other hand, if pushed I might do one party trick I know and rattle off a certain Ronald Grimsley quote I love. I read it first while taking refuge in my temporary lodgings the evening before my doomed interview at Oxford, on account of which I was banished to Durham. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon was playing in the background.

When I read this:

‘The movement which began as a vigorous attack on Hegelian Metaphysics is, therefore, metaphysical in another sense, since the dethronement of an essentially conceptualising rationalism in favour of a more existential approach which accords greater importance to the testimony of affective human experience, is intended mainly as a way of compelling man towards a new awareness of being.’*

I burst out in fits of laughter, which entirely destroyed the amorphous ambience Waters had intended to convey. I think I found, and find, it as funny as I do, for three reasons. Firstly it is long and complex, and dextrous as a cobra on heat. Secondly, its metre is jaunty and springy, yet tight as leather trousers. While thirdly, it is actually brilliant, not at all verbose, even though it will be considered to be. On the contrary, every single word is necessary. What it says is also fascinating, besides: that existentialism, so often associated with atheism and materialism, can in fact be understood as metaphysical in a new way, and the reason why. I think it's possibly a strange thing about me that I will often laugh at something uproariously precisely because I admire it, or think it brilliant. I like to think this laughter might have been similar to, or the same as, what Nietzsche called ‘Golden laughter’. It is the opposite of derisory laughter, cynical laughter, the laughter of the vengeful. It is a little orgasm of the soul, as it encounters something that must be celebrated, now, and with more than just words.

And yet when people hear me laugh in this way they sometimes think my attitude is to mock, as opposed to take delight. This disjunction can be confusing and embarrassing.

* Apologies to the friends, families and associates of Professor Ronald Grimsley (RIP) if I quote him incorectly. I am recalling from memory.

Affairs Of State

Recently, as one does of a Friday morning, I was wandering through the blogosphere, looking for things to read.

Eventually, I wound up at www.englandparliament.blogspot.com.

Here the case is put for an English Parliament to offset the new Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament, created in the early years of Blairdom. This case relates closely to the West Lothian complaint: that sense that the Celtic countries of the UK have an unreasonable influence over purely English affairs. I may write further about the West Lothian question at a later date, as well as the related proposals to establish an English Parliament for English issues. This morning, however, I was given to meditate on the deeper, broader question of the identity and constitution of my country as a whole. That is, England, the largest country of the as yet still, just about, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I was fired up to this end after reading about how, in Chris Abbott’s opinion, Alan Duncan, the Shadow Trade Secretary, had been insufficiently concerned in a recent article he’s written, to safeguard and consider England’s interests, inclining too much to emphasise Britain’s identity above that of England’s.

Chris Abbott took umbridge with Duncan’s emphasis on the so-called ‘Regions’ of England. Yorkshire, said Duncan, was a region, when in fact, of course, well at least as far as England is concerned, as opposed to the European Union, it is a county (or three counties, to be precise). Then after quoting Duncan as saying this:

But we still need to do more to target areas of the UK that are failing to keep pace with the rest of the country.

Abbott replied: The UK - a country? Surely it's a Union of countries?

At which point, not disagreeing but feeling the Realm shattered and broken, supine on the floor beneath me, I felt encouraged to take up me ‘pen’ (if you see what I mean). I then proceeded, it might be supposed, to have ‘gone off on one’, as the curious idiom would have it:

Yes the UK is a union of countries, not regions. Just as England is a union of counties; and counties, so one hopes, a union of cities, towns and villages, each of which are unions, or so one hopes, of neighbourhoods and families - which are, again, or so one hopes, unions of individuals who don't hate each other too much.

This, to me, is the natural, healthy order of things. No I'm not saying 'There is no such thing as Society', but we do need, I feel, to return to our roots, to the familiar, to what is most at home about ourselves.

The UK is essentially two things: The shared face that our four countries show to the world, and a statement of our common bonds of cultural affinity, bonds that understand themselves as rooted in the lands of the British Isles and united around a common allegiance to the Crown.

To me The Union Jack is a Monarchical expression of the Union of the British peoples around the Crown. It is not the flag of England, and obviously not the flag of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland (though these nations (except Wales, alas) express themselves through it). There really should be no tensions or confusions regarding this matter.

Personally, I have no problem being both English and British. But I am not Welsh, nor Scottish nor Northern Irish. Indeed I would expect a person from these countries to get upset with my presumptiousness if I ever claimed that I was.

But the problem is, if you take away my right to be English, this will mean either that I will have to become Welsh or Scottish or Northern Irish OR that all of our British peoples will also have been deprived of their rights to identify themselves with their respective countries.

Is this what Europe wants, I wonder?

Actually, my comment has not yet been approved. Maybe the webmaster thinks I’m some kind of nutter.

Or maybe he’s a Republican. Not sure that that should matter too much, though. I would question the relevance of this issue to the basic bond of English patriotism that we share. After all, the role of the Crown is to defend the laws and liberties of the British Peoples, so Monarchists and Republicans should always be able at the very least to agree that what is most important in our form of government is that it discharge this duty to our freedoms and our dignity.

As for why I would prefer Monarchy to a Republic, that is a whole separate question. But it is perhaps instructive to remember that the last time we experimented with a Republic, the experiment came to an end not because the Monarchist forces wrested the country back from the Roundheads by force, but because the Army, fearing anarchy, asked Charless II to come back. And even before this, let us not forget, Cromwell himself had been offered the Crown, though he declined it, assuming its functions in all but name. Our innate preference for Monarchy has already been shown – and this preference, despite the best efforts of a scurrilous and vapid media to sell newspapers through scandalous reportage, seems, despite all modernist suppositions that it should not have endured, to have nonetheless endured.

On the other hand, maybe Chris Abbott didn't post my comment because he wants to see a dissolution of the Union?

Professor Tillotson

I have a friend in Santa Cruz, California, a virtual friend, whom I have neither spoken to nor seen. Yet now and again we have very stimulating 'finger chats', courtesy of Yahoo Messenger.

She calls me handsome a great deal, and the like. Ironic, given the dearth of visual stimuli we share, though it's very welcome anyway. I don't normally get such compliments from the ladies, he said as a matter of fact.

Anyway, narcissism aside, we had just got onto the subject of transgenderism and what it was. Then she had to fly. The next day she asked me to remind her what we'd been talking about, but I had to fly. But not before suggesting that she write me an essay. About what, she said. About transgenderism and what she thought of it. She'd always seemed interested in gender issues, after all. She said, ok Professor Tillotson, but you need to be more focussed. So I gave it some thought and, wanting to give her some choice, came up with these nine tasks.

You will note that the concept 'Transgenderism' is painted with a think, broad brush. I mean everything that challenges conventional, traditional, gender-role, mission statements.

1. Give an overview of how feminism in American culture has changed in its ideology and expression since the 1960s.
2. How have women in America reacted to the various ways in which men have tried, or have not tried, to respond to feminist critiques against them and to change, or not change, their behaviours towards women, both in the workplace and in the 'dating game'. Do women want pre 1960s men back?
3. Does the American homosexual community in America have an agenda other than to merely not be discriminated against and oppressed?
4. To what extent do modern American women want to dominate men, as opposed to just be their equals.
5. Why don't women make the first move more than they do?
6. Why is it both impolite and so often ineffective for a man to ask a woman for sexual relations directly, as opposed to ask her for sex indirectly through courtship rituals and discourse?
7. In what ways do women not understand men.
8. What do women want? (Not very original I know).
9. Give an account of the reasons why the birthrate is dropping amongst Caucasian women in the Western World.
   
   It goes without saying that if anyone out there wants to write me an essay on any of the above they should go right ahead. My email is on my profile page.

Let's Talk About Sex

"There are a lot of female sex writers these days. Honestly, I don’t know why. All I know is that for me, sex shows us who we really are." From The Reverse Cowgirl

Although expressing a common perception, it’s interesting that of all the avenues granting us insight into the human condition, sex is often considered the most important.

“Understand sex, my good man, and you have grasped the very root of the matter.”

I have a friend who believes it’s very important to talk about sex. He believes sexual energies emerge from the very heart and center of who we are as persons. On his reckoning, if we don’t talk about ourselves in sexual terms, we’ re not really talking about ourselves at all.

Crikey.

What do I think of all this, then?

Firstly, I’m confused. I’m not sure if Reverse Cowgirl wants to imply that nothing but sex can show us who we are; or if she feels that sex must be included as an important, but not the only, ingredient in any method of understanding we might employ to illuminate humanitas. Maybe these distinctions are not relevant to her. Maybe I’m ‘splitting hairs’.

But anyway, what is sex? I’m not asking as an essentialistic, natural theologian might, eager to move you through circuitous pathways of rhetoric and suggestion to an already established, waiting conclusion that sex is what I, what Nature or what God deem it to be, not what you feel it to be.

I mean, what is sex, existentially, in the experience and architecture of the self? Leaving aside every gloomy, moral consideration of the age old question: "What is to be done with our genitals", what place, what role, what potency, what importance: sex and the self?

Even though I’ve narrowed the question down a bit, I’m still not sure we know what we’re talking about. What do I mean by this ‘sex’ that is relevant, existentially, to our lives? Am I talking only about acts of genital interaction with others or oneself, and our fantasies, the sex we’d like to have with others but can’t (too unattractive, too shy, too incompetent, the other’s unavailable) or won’t (our own moral compass). Or, on the other hand, am I talking about a certain order of energy in the body, something that is always there, which combines with other energies in the body and self at all times, or, as some might suppose, is the only real energy of the self, which only pretends sometimes to exist under other names?

If sex is more than our genital deeds, after all, we can no longer maintain that there can be some people who do not ‘have sex’. Even if your celibacy achieves the high, exacting standards set for it by the Magisterium of The Roman Catholic Church, and you don’t even masturbate (something progressives confidently tell us is impossible), on this reckoning, one is still having sex because sexual energy, and the relevance it possesses in the self, is still having you, moulding you, shaping you. Hurrah! You need no longer feel exiled and banished by the morays of the modern! Even you –involuntarily sexual celibate that you are or adventurous climber of the mountain heights of ascetic equanimity that you have become – even you are having sex, deny it as you may.

I am no sexpert. My thoughts on sex are highly subjective. Oddly enough, this seems somehow appropriate. The heart of sexuality, after all, what Gurdjieff called the ‘sex centre’ and other Asian physiologists call the 'sex chakra', is tangled in amidst our digestive tract and lavatorial infrastructure. Like our stomach aches and customs of egestion, it is an intimate, private affair; of little importance to the public weal – despite the contrary impression its status in the public imagination and public discourse seems to give it in these post-Freudian, oh so liberated, funky, dunky days.

Sex used to be done in private while prayer used to be done in public. Now sex is done in public. Even in the privacy of ones boudoir it is done in public, given the extent to which an obsessiveness to conform to media decreed templates of sexual convention has invaded our psyches. While prayer, if it is done at all, is increasingly done in private, according to a shattered randomness reinforcing the egotistical isolation that spirituality had originally sought to correct. The “anarchy of individual belief”, my lecturer at Durham Colin Crowder used to call it, quoting somebody else I believe.

Things sure do change. Perhaps in the future eating will be the new taboo. People will take their spaghetti bolognaise into the water closet with them so as not to be seen. They will gather to gossip and exchange pleasantries as they relieve themselves.

When I reacted to Reverse Cowgirl’s line, it was because of what I imagined she implied about the range of human identity; namely that it doesn’t extend that far beyond the sexual, if at all, except perhaps through pretentious flourishings of sublimated dishonesty and repression (her thinking perhaps allied to the old “everything must be dumbed down and demystified in the name of sex” imperative). Maybe she didn’t mean this. No matter. I’m sure a lot of people do. You don’t have to be unintelligent to think like this. Why, you can even be a highly accomplished figure in science and academe and maintain that all we are is sexual, and nothing but. That our sole meaning and purpose in life is to fuck and keep going something the purpose of which is to fuck and keep going, so that it can fuck.

Do I mind being thought of as a sexual being? Why, not at all, my good lady. While it is true that sexual happiness can hardly be said to have been particularly visible in my life so far, I don’t think my portion of sexual dissatisfaction has been that remarkable or outstanding. As I believe it has been said, far more people are bored by, far less people satisfied with, the sex they get than one might suppose. While the existence of involuntary celibacy and the prevalence of misery and heartache occasioned by the often maleficent effects of sexual relationships gone awry, can together speak of a lack of access to sexual experience, and a darkness and deceitfulness wrapped up in sex, moreover, that our society’s concerted efforts to trumpet sex as the ultimate pinnacle of human meaning and fulfillment tends rather too often to obscure.

I am not, I feel obliged to protest, anti-sex. I don’t feel I have had sufficient reason to be. A lot of people suffer from sex more than I do. Either they lack it more than I have (I speak here of interactive sex, not just masturbation, that solitary consolation). Or they are hurt by it more than I have been. While I do not believe that attitudes in support of celibacy will necessarily reveal an underlying hostility to sex in general, I think they sometimes can. Speaking personally, I don’t have that requisite degree of bitterness about sex, of ressentiment as Nietzsche would put it, to have become, as I believe some others have become, someone who wants to put sex into cold storage and banish it from human experience.

I am, so I suddenly hallucinate, being perceived right now as someone who is being defensive about sex. Let us call him my hypothetical reader.

You protest too much. Why say you are not anti-sex unless subconsciously you know that you are anti-sex?

I don’t really understand how I can wriggle out of that one; how I can escape from that pin fixing me, wriggling to that wall, other than to say that I’m not defensive about not being anti-sex.

I happen to suspect that the reason my hypothetical reader supposes I’m being defensive is that he and I actually have a disagreement, not about whether or not sex is good, but about whether or not sex is all that we are. He thinks it is, or at least that sex is what we are ‘most essentially’. I do not. He sniffs out and senses that this is the root of the matter. That ultimately we are disagreeing not about physics but metaphysics. He doesn’t want to accuse me of having metaphysical beliefs, however. That would be too easy. He knows I have them already. And he knows that I’d only plead guilty if he did. He wants to go to the next step. To his understanding, it’s not possible to have such metaphysical beliefs and at the same time be positive about sex. Therefore, discerning my spiritual anchoring, he takes the metaphysical commitment for granted and leaps to his inference, and conclusion, that I am anti-sex, and asks me knowingly if I am. He is so certain, so confident that I am anti-sex, moreover (whatever anti-sex means – hang on, that’s another quagmire), that he won’t take no for an answer. Assisted in his own mind by the suspicion that I am uptight and nervous and fidgeting, distractedly, as I write this, he concludes that I must be in denial. He doesn’t believe me when I say that I’m not anti-sex. So he plays his unanswerable masterstroke, and tells me that I don’t know my own mind because I am governed by my subconscious, a subconscious that is unknown to me and that pulls my strings from within. Oddly enough, even though he is not me, and so for that reason even more at a remove from my subconscious than I am, he knows the contents of this occult, esoteric me better than I do. Remarkable! He is the master of my dreams. Should I give him my money?

Let’s talk about sex.

Ok, why not. But to me sex is just a part of who I am. For this reason, alas, I am not going to be able to talk about it as if nothing else mattered, as if it and its permutations and possibilities are not always linked in to and informed by aspects of my self, considerations about myself, that are not sexual. That are, for example, emotional, intellectual or spiritual. While I accept that, yes, one might want to maintain that these words merely refer to qualities that are but dishonest sublimations of the same sexual sex that we see vividly displayed in empirical matter and expressed in our erotic deeds, this is not what I maintain. Yes, everything about us is inter-connected. But that doesn’t mean that everything about us is identical with what the Neo-Platonists amongst us might want, rather derisorily, to refer to as our lowest common denominator.

Yes, I know, I must be a boring person to talk to about sex. Sigh.

The belief that it is in this way identical, that everything that is crucially important about ourselves is sex, and a sex, besides, that is resolutely materialistic and stubbornly unsubtle or untranscendental, seems to be pretty widespread these days. As I might put it to my dear friend Lee, possibly laughing in a way only he would understand, with respect to the belief that sex is God and Lord of all: ‘There’s a lot of it about’.

I’m not sure after all that, that I'm any closer to answering the question of what sex is. But I feel at least pretty sure that I know what it is not. And that what it is not is everything.

Something of a cliché, you might retort. But if that is the case, and we all know this to be true, why do we talk about sex in the ways that we do?

General Synod

Currently my brother is attending the annual General Synod of the Church of England at the University of York. My brother is not a bishop or anything like that. On the other hand his 14 years of experience as vicar have set him in good enough stead to attend this year as a humble member of the assembly.

This year it discusses if women should become bishops, that is, holders of the most senior positions in the Anglican Church, except for the two Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and The Queen, who is Supreme Governor (and a woman, funnily enough).

If you live in the UK you will probably know about the Synod already. Our media tends to drop its customary lack of interest in the spiritual health and affairs of the nation when some controversial point affecting the Church of England can be set upon to incite scandal or reflection on its allegedly beleaguered fate and advancing decline.

But what interests me is how utterly bizarre and bonkers, if not sinister, this must all seem to your average, everyday post-Christian. Their knowledge of the gospel, after all, floats somewhere between non-existent and a stable, a star, some shepherds and three Kings gathered around a manger.

Are Christians aware, I wonder, of what these people must think about a gospel they know nothing about when all that they’re told about it by their favourite media outlets is that the principal institution in the land subscribing to it doesn’t like gays, doesn’t want to employ gays, and doesn’t want women to break through any threatening glass ceilings?

Don’t worry. I am not advocating censorship of the press to advance some rosier, less prurient Canterburian presentation. I set my colours firmly to the mast of our hard won, post-medieval liberties of conscience. I do not seek to imitate the authoritarian ambitions of certain other Godly paths I could mention.

Nor, just to let you know, do I believe, as a Christian (of a kind), that there is no place for a discussion of sexuality, homosexuality or the role of the ‘sacred feminine’ in Church debates.

All that confuses and perplexes me is how Christians have allowed it to come to pass that their faith can be seen by the wider, general, unbelieving public as something primarily, if not only, preoccupied with such secondary and, relatively speaking, irrelevant matters such as is homosexuality wrong and should women celebrate the Eucharist.

Just as I have no problem at all understanding why someone might not believe in the existence of God if they have had no experiences of what they take to be God, especially in light of the obvious sufferings of the world; so I have no problem understanding that if you are an atheist, or if not then a believer in some self-styled divinity of your own devising, you might very well, according to the lights of your own notions of virtue, see no reason why the Church's teachings on homosexuality, for example, can hold any water at all; how they could be anything other than a mere ideological justification for an ancient, hysterical homophobia.

Christian morality is morality for Christians. That is a logical utterance that seems robust enough for me. And when I say Christian morality I mean Christian morality, not Christian sexual morality – which is a mere outworking and expression of Christian morality, as is Christian business morality, Christian martial morality and Christian table manners for that matter.

Asking or expecting a non-Christian world to understand or embrace Christian morality without being Christians first, is a bit like criticizing players of baseball for fouling up the performance of cricket when they are not even trying to play the game.

First invite people to become Christians. First explain to them, present to them, show to them, demonstrate for them the glory and splendour and majesty and freedom that resides in the Gospel of Christ. Only then, if they become Christians, can they be expected to behave like Christians. Before this point, what justification can there be for Judgement? You tell me.

Why moralize to the outsiders when they don’t know what your’re talking about.

To Hijab or not to Hijab

Legally, Kuwait does not oblige women, Kuwaiti or ex-pat, Muslim or non-Muslim, to wear the veil, or as it is said, the hijab. By the hijab, I mean one of three things.

Wearing only a headscarf:

Wearing a headscarf and abaya or long robe:













Wearing, in addition to such a total body covering, a face covering to cover either everything or everything but the eyes:

The legality of veillessness is one of the ways Kuwait, while certainly the second most conservative country in the Gulf, is different from Saudi Arabia, its larger, considerably more restrictive neighbour to the south.

Nevertheless, most Kuwaiti women choose to wear the veil – of one kind or another at least some of the time. To an extent, this is because 99.98% of Kuwaitis are Islamic*; and as we know, Islam favours the hijab, especially in its more conservative expressions.

But Islam cannot be the only reason. If it were many Islamic, Lebanese, Egyptian and Syrian ladies in Kuwait, as well as a noticeable minority of Kuwaitis, who proudly and unself-consciously display their hair, would be considered, and would consider themselves, to be making anti-Islamic gestures. But they are not. Nor, I’m sure, would they be allowed to make such gestures if such a semiotic meaning attached to them.

Some Islamic militants, of course, think it’s anti-Islamic if women, especially Muslim women, don’t wear the veil. But this is not a mainstream, Kuwaiti perception. Yes, not wearing one indicates a less than all-consuming religious fervour; yes, it might be thought, ideally, you really should wear one. But that’s not the same as decreeing that if you don’t, you’re rejecting or attacking Islam. For now, despite the advancing rise of religious conservatism in Kuwait - reflected in the recent acquisition of an additional 50 seats in the Parliament by religiously motivated MPs - a perhaps surprising degree of relative freedom, not only in matters of clothing, exists in Kuwait. Especially if one considers the misconceptions some in the West might have about how conservative it really is here. It is very conservative. I would never doubt that. But it’s not that conservative.

Women can drive, women can vote**, women can walk the streets alone, women can sit with men who are not their relatives, and talk to them in public. In private schools, girls and boys can be educated together, and classes are mixed at the State University (though this may change). Freedoms exist that while unremarkable in most of the world, are deprived women just a few kilometers across the border.

Recently, I talked over the question of hijab with a charming, engaging and Islamic, Somali woman whom I’ve recently been fortunate enough to befriend. Outside of work, she does not wear the veil, except occasionally. I’d heard that Somalia was very religious. So I was a little surprised about this.

Actually, I didn’t ask why she, a devout Muslim, doesn’t always wear hijab, as that would have seemed rude. It was she herself who made illuminating remarks about why women, given their freedom not to wear hijab, nevertheless do. Clearly, many women wear it for religious and cultural reasons which they choose voluntarily. As I understand it, the rationale seems to lie with the understanding that a woman’s beauty belongs to her husband. It shouldn’t be devalued by being shared between too many eyes in a circumstance, one supposes, that compromises its scarcity and therefore value. If the woman is not yet married, then her beauty exists for no man, except, innocently, her male relatives at home. The veil is an extension of the home’s walls, formally delineating the private, as opposed to public sphere. On the other hand, and unavoidably related to this, is that a woman’s beauty is understood, reasonably enough I suppose, as an inducement to male sexual covetousness. While Islam is relatively free of the specifically Neo-Platonic, anti-carnal associations that have regularly pitted Spirit against Flesh in frenzies of insanity in the West, Islam does have a keen appreciation of the vigour and zeal of male, sexual lust; and most relevantly, its distracting potential when it comes to the male’s choice between congress and God. Notions that it is the responsibility of the male, inside his own conscience, to restrain and order his lusts, in spite of female fleshly appearances, being relatively unemphasised, it has thus come to recoil as a duty upon women to assist the uncontrollable in controlling themselves and directing their attentions to God, where they belong.

A second reason my friend suggested for wearing the veil was fashion. Some of the headscarves can exude a stunning elegance, especially when set off by the right kind of hypnotic, facial beauty, accentuated by the very concealment that surrounds it. Some headscarves and robes come adorned with precious stones, moreover; while cursory internet searches reveal the many coloured options for headscarves on the market.

The final reason was one that had never occurred to me, but that is striking in its obviousness. Some women wear the veil, they assume the means of legitimate, public concealment, not to minimize but to maximize their freedom of movement and expression. In a culture, like every culture, where, if you are a woman, eyes can conspire to keep tabs on you, a hijab in return, as long as it be sufficiently concealing, can conspire to promote an invisibility of a quite different kind.

* Out of a population of 1.1 million Kuwaiti citizens (figures vary) there are, apparently, only 250 Kuwaiti Christians. These are drawn from a handful of families that converted to Christianity when Kuwait was under British control, whose past choice of religious conversion, a fait accompli as it were, is now respected.

** Kuwaiti women were granted the vote in Kuwait for the first time in April 2006.

Not Used To Boasting

“Jonathan is experienced and proficient at improving students competency in English to the standard required for University study, be that study in the field of the Humanities or Business. By utilizing a strongly learner-centered approach, he is aware of the importance of flexibility in targeting his teaching to the aspirations and needs of his students. Above all, by sharpening and refining their powers of expression, he wants his students to grow in intellectual and analytical self-confidence so that they will excel as much as they are able, in both their University studies and the workplace beyond.” Jonathan, 2008

"In the world as it should be, men would not chase women. Women would chase men. Men would chase the Kingdom of Heaven." Jonathan, 1991.

"The problem with you, Mr Tillotson, is you need to live in a more gracious age than this." Father Anthony Meredith, SJ, 1994 (quoted from memory).

Recently, I've had some news. This news is still secret from my Kuwaiti boss. I have about five bosses in my company by the way, but it’s the Kuwaiti one who pays. The news won’t be secret much longer, however. Even though the chance of his reading my blog is quark-sized, amongst the few who care about my Most Royal Obscureness, word begins to circulate. I have a future and it isn’t him. This news might wing its way to him somehow.

Before long he will need to be told. He needs his notice period. The bureaucratic wheels of residency and work visa transference, which I have worried, possibly without cause, he might obstruct - hence my delay in informing him - need to begin their croaking, labyrinthine circuits. Actually, I’ve nothing against him at all. I have always found him rather charming, the two times I’ve met him. He has treated me well. But in the Game of the Gulf, so I sense, when in doubt, fortune favours the silent.

The words that I recently wrote, above in italics, are for some PR literature for my future employer. It felt weird writing it. It always feels weird, having to sell myself. I do not like doing it. I can’t help feeling it is in poor taste. But here, as in interviews if I want to stand a chance of succeeding, I had to force myself.

Actually, in this case the energy and zeal I mustered to get my new job surprised me. Typically, my efforts to secure work are less than half-hearted. Begrudged, weary expressions of resignation to wage slave reality are usually my style. Might it be, can it be believed: after seven years of not wanting to be a Tefl teacher, am I finally coming round to the idea?

There might be some truth in this. I’m not sure. Let me sit on that thought awhile. In any case, do not take this fancy as a cancellation of my invitation to you to suggest, or better provide, rosier, more meaningful avenues for my talents and potentialities – howsoever you may perceive them. As I have written before, I’m happier to be bought than to sell myself.

Where did I acquire my aesthetic, visceral, aversion to boasting. I realize what a feminised psychologist would say, dripping, oozing matronisation: You lack self-esteem. You should be more confident. You were not loved enough as a child. Don’t be so wet.

Whatever the status of these presumptious, intimidating observations, what interests me are the cultural, intellectual influences that might underwrite, shore up, justify my, admittedly, existential reluctance to boast, to loudly sing my own praises; especially to sing them where they belong to be sung, or so we’re told: in the two fields of endeavour that are supposed to matter the most to male egos keen to reproduce their genes and maximize their impact: before the faces of ladies, and in the search for employment.

I like to think I get some justification for what I like to consider not my weakness but my attachment to a gracious, sublimely higher life, from the life of Jesus Christ. Though clearly certain, if not arrogant, about his own importance when pressed, in his behaviour he was very humble; both preaching and enacting examples of altruistic service towards others (albeit a service that made him happy as well; well, until Gethsemane). The boasts he did make, when he made them (expressed most repetitively in the Gospel of John), tended to be made after he’d performed some outrageously cool miracle or delivered one of his heart warming wisdom speeches, stunning his audience into an imploring curiosity. He didn’t market himself as someone who should either be taken on trust, or found interesting to the exclusion of others. On the contrary, that we might be interested in and make space for others, was exactly what he wanted; that we should hunger and long for the happiness and joy of others, as God, with whom it is true he identified, hungers and longs for ours; for the happiness of his creations, their liberation from the dark consequences of their own self-chosen, self-enclosing, selfishness.

In a defence of myself against the accusation of betraying a wetness ill-suited to our shamelessly self-centred age, beyond Jesus, I would defer generally to a long tradition of thought in Christendom; a tradition which at least in its explicit intentions has sought to promulgate and promote ideals of self-sacrificing service and love. I acknowledge that such thought has not always, or even often, materialized in practical action; that charges of hypocrisy and failure to deliver are absolutely justified on occasions. But not on all occasions, I would hasten to insist. What we should remember about hypocrisy, moreover, which many Westerners, resentful and disenchanted with their own culture, seem not to want to see, is that at least hypocrisy reveals the existence of some standards, even if they are not kept. Not being hypocritical, not failing to be who you aspire to be, as a culture, is all very easy if what you aspire to be is exactly what you already are, or even less.

I tangentialise, if that's a word. Should it be? I think so.

What I want to say in conclusion is that I dislike asserting and promoting my qualities in the abstract - by speaking of or referring to them (whatever they may be). I would prefer, unselfconsciously, to just show them, by just embodying them, to those who can or wish to see them. It is not for me to relate to you my value, whatever it may be. It is for you to perceive it, insofar as it is valuable to you. That goes as much, I feel, for a woman who might want to mate with me, as for someone who might want to give me money in exchange for some activity on my part.

If this leads you to suppose I should want to live in a very different world, then, in which, amongst other features, women were more proactive in the courtship processes ( there is no modern equivalent for 'courtship') and employers were more upfront in selling themselves to potential employees, whom they would conclude from their own perceptions were suitable for them, you would be right.

Such a world, sublime, gracious, abundant, sacrificing no standards of excellence on its altars of co-operation; peaceful and advancing according to a higher dialectic; in which the interactions of opposites occur through love, not war. This is the world that I come from, if I might be mythological for a moment. The world I want to see.

Diversions

Questions taken from Reluctant Blogger's website

WHAT WAS I DOING TEN YEARS AGO?

I was living in Tooting Bec, London, with my school friend, Adam Lidster. I had recently split up with my girlfriend, a super market check out girl and mother of a two year old boy, who lived in a somewhat medieval looking village in Suffolk. I was working for a backstreet company making display cases for shopping malls. Most enchantingly, no joke, this could involve me pulling a gypsy wagon by hand from the Oval all the way to Covent Garden through, and in spite of, the morning traffic.

WHAT ARE 5 THINGS ON YOUR LIST TO DO TODAY?

I don’t keep such lists, but I’ll not be a pedantic twit. To have lunch. To hang around the office, in which I have no work to do, surfing the internet, drinking coffee. To organise papers about sundry, official matters relating to next year. To go see a flat in a colourfully named place – Mahboula - in Southern Kuwait. To consider the question of dinner.

THINGS I WOULD DO IF I BECAME A BILLIONAIRE

Consider at last that Justice had been done!

No, seriously. Provisionally, I would feel very happy, indeed! I would not immediately give up my job but certainly would, soon enough. I would not, I hope, tell anyone I’d miraculously become a billionaire for at least a few weeks, except for a financial advisor. I would not, I think, want to give away too much of the actual capital (though I might change my mind). Rather, so I could give away permanently, I would want, annually, to give away most of the interest earnt on the money. I would give money to people I admired and felt needed the money, to specific individuals in dire need and to humanitarian causes (as directly as possible. I distrust charities and the Governments to whom they sometimes have to give through). Possibly, I might want to found an unashamedly elitist University, open only to those who can score highly according not only to intellectual, but moral and spiritual, criteria. My own personal lifestyle wouldn’t change much, though presumably I wouldn’t have to worry any more about vulgar, boring things like ‘financial security’.

FIVE PLACES I HAVE LIVED

Cambridge. 69 Barton Road in Newnham, near Grantchester.
The majestic, ethereal city of Durham, Seat of the Prince Bishop’s. Place of congregation of noble, undecadent spirits. Before Elberry’s time, just.
London. Tooting Bec, Tooting Broadway. Islington
Slovakia. Bratislava, including the very famous and imposing Petrazalka.
Kuwait. Salmiya, above a bakery, a toyshop, many Indians and Bangladeshis, and a very busy road.

THREE OF MY BAD HABITS

Not sure I’m qualified to say…how about –

Eating too much
Not having enough sex
Eating sardines direct from the tin; hating housework, generally

FIVE JOBS I HAVE HAD

Wine waiter
Barman
Gypsy wagon puller
Telesalesman (less than a week)
Teacher of English

HOW DID YOU NAME YOUR BLOG?

It is supposed, I believe, to be some kind of conceivably pretentious aspiration to live in the eyes of eternity.

Sisyphus

Reading today on the Reluctant Blogger, I came across an affecting piece about suicide. Reluctant is right that suicide is taboo. Talking about it is not easy – well, except to suicidal people who on the whole rather like to talk about it, often too much, their burdened, less miserable audience might feel.

Society’s default position on suicide is that it is ‘selfish’. This fashionably modern defect is the vestige of a historical scorn for the deed that, regrettably, used to be far more severe. Failure to be buried on consecrated ground, you know. You can’t get more resounding an expression of contempt than that.

Setting aside the outstanding, logical difficulties presented by an act of self-destruction being understood as an act in service of the self, other objections can be mentioned. Reluctant invited feedback and perspectives on suicide. The comments are thoughtful, touching and insightful. I recommend them for anyone interested in the subject.

I added me ‘two cents’, as it is said. Where did that phrase come from?

'Suicide is a selfish act, but this, in my opinion, is because the suicidal state of mind that leads to it is so often that of a mind inaccessibly cut off from the capacity to feel its living, relational connections to other people.

When you are the only reality that you can feel, it is to be expected that you would behave in a selfish way.

So I'd say that while suicide is selfish (and depression itself a selfish emotional state), this doesn't mean I don't feel a deep, fully forgiving compassion towards those who wish to, or do, commit it.

The atomisation of human society into isolated individuals bereft of a sufficiently organic, shared sense of belonging to a community, is, I would say, the fundamental background reason for the possibility of suicide.

The wealth of reports from those who say they are glad that they didn't commit suicide after wanting to, together with psychiatrists belief that ambiguity and ambivalence of resolve very often characterise the suicidal mindset prior to the deed, tells me that suicide intervention is a justifiable policy, albeit, I accept, complicated in its implications.

Pathetic as it may sound, my suspicion is that suicidal people just aren't getting the right amount of the right type of love in their life. Medication and analysis is often incapable of providing such love, alas. This is not to blame their friends or families, however, for not loving them, as being loved and feeling that you are loved can be very different things. Besides, love should be more readily available and present in society in general.

Another interesting perspective is to think of suicide in terms of the age old tension and conflict between the 'ego' and the 'true self' - a dialectic usually, but not necessarily, conceived of in spiritual terms.

The ego, our superficial sense of self, our personality, built from our projections, ambitions, fears and attachments is, I would suggest, universally dysfunctional. Spirituality is the quest to transcend this and access the timeless, deeper, unconditioned self which is only love, only peace, only joy. I think many people try to access this purer, more authentic psychic ground through activities such as, for example, alcohol, drugs, the passionate love of art, political or religious fanaticism, extreme sports, orgasm and the rhapsodies of romantic love -things which unite them to something larger than themselves.

We are trying to escape ourselves in order to find ourselves, because something in us tells us that this - our humdrum everyday ego-bound, conflicted, consciousness- is not all that we are.

Understood in this context, I see that suicidal people, then, are not so very different. The difference is a question of the degree of the desire to escape, not a different kind of desire.

Since atomised societies tend to increase ego strengthening, narcissistic tendencies, this confirms, to me, my original thoughts about atomisation and suicide.

This is a really sympathetic, thoughtful post of yours. Tragically, yes, suicide is taboo."

Ok, more like two dollars, than two cents.

Yosemite

Alas, I didn’t get to see any bears in Yosemite. Or rather, I did but only ones climbing in an out of car windows on the promotional videos shown to alarm new guests at the Curry Village camping ground.

It felt almost military, assiduously obeying the finer details of how to keep these invisible bears at bay. Absolutely nothing to be left in your car; no food, no toiletries, no drinks, no trash. All food and odorous items to be stored overnight in lockers outside the tent door, only water to be taken inside. Most exciting. It felt hardy and noble to be camping, too. Even though I had to insist, for an extra 30 dollars, so I could get at least some sleep, that my tent - equipped like all the tents with bouncy mattress and bed - be a heated one.

Despite the bear disappointment, Yosemite was definitely worth the drive. All the sickly sweet, tourist guff you’re liable to encounter about the ‘Spirit of Yosemite’. It’s all true. That said, if you want to see the waterfalls - a major highlight – you need to go, as I did, before the summer, when the mountain snows haven’t finished melting. Best to go, too, during the week, unless you have a particular desire for human beings amidst your cliffs and redwoods.

The Gay Misogynist?

I was nervous about going into one of the gay bars on Castro’s main street. It looked crowded and was pumping, raw and raucous. I could hardly see inside. Homophobic ghouls whispered fearsome scenarios in my ears.

Starbucks had no free seats, so before long I swallowed my fear and propped myself up at the red, brightly lit bar. The male staff’s attire conformed to the rippling, muscle-hugging stereotype I had expected to find.

I looked round and noticed the customers were young and predominantly, but not exclusively, male. Were the ladies lesbians, I wondered? This might fit the location. Or were they straight and keen to escape the otherwise inescapable gaze of desirous male eyes (such as my own, unluckily for them)? Or, less drastically, were they here because gay men are ‘nice’ and like to, or at least can, talk about shopping and makeup and men? Or maybe, if straight, the bar was just nearby, or they were visiting friends. In any case, unlike the men, they were not kissing each other – if that means anything.

A couple of young women, pretty indeed, sat next to me. On my account? - I wondered, in a wild moment. But they made no efforts to engage me, nor I them, as the intensity of their mutual involvement fenced me out - as it did not the barman, whom they would regularly embrace and call ‘darling’. A part of my brain had wondered if women in a gay bar might be more forthcoming than normally at initiating conversations with men...or with me at least.

I sat there drinking four pints of beer, remembering I was not in Kuwait, staring at people in an innocently vacant way, feeling pretty good about things, wondering occasionally if I should read my book.

A bar three doors up the road was very different. The crowd was older - middle aged- and exclusively male. Again I sat at the bar, this time next to an elderly, moustachioed gentleman, primed in the sixties I should think. Like Tiresias from the café, he lamented the passage of time and the decline of The Castro. I remarked that it was bizarre (for me) to be in a bar packed only with men, gay pornography aflame on overhead TVs. You should have seen it in the early days, in the 70s, he replied. Large screen performances of harder stuff than that, the audience sucking and fucking festively beneath; not timidly reconciled, as now, to the respectability and acceptability that the victory of gay rights has wrought.

Clearly, there is no pleasing some people.

He explained that the other bar I’d been in was for a younger, mixed crowd, that a generational gap within the gay community explained the differences in atmosphere. Whereas the men next door were younger, camper, more ‘feminine’ – closer it might be said to the stereotypical gay boy; here, men were still ‘men’ in everything other than their sexual preferences, being unashamedly masculine, if not butch.

This was confirmed by a man standing to my left. Though he added another observation I found very interesting.

Nowadays, San Francisco is ‘run by women’. These women, because of their newfound self-confidence and power, are in a position to demand from men certain characteristics and attributes. These, on the whole, are feminine, and the heterosexual male majority, keen as ever to do what it takes to seduce women, agree to do and be what it takes. In consequence, many straights are now more feminised even than the camp gays next door! Only amongst the men of this bar, he suggested, could true masculinity be found. Only amongst those who don’t have to, because they don’t need to, mould themselves to the designs of the new woman.

An interesting perspective. And where could I find a lesbian bar, I asked?

They are around, he answered. I would be welcome but I won’t find any men there, gay or straight. As for the gays, they don’t mix much with the lesbians. They work together on questions of rights and social issues, of course, but that’s about it.

The Castro

The last time I’d visited the Castro area of San Francisco in 2002 I sang “Sing" by Travis in a gay Karaoke bar. I have no idea if the clientele automatically supposed I was gay. I’m not sure how many straight men tend to go, alone, to gay bars of an afternoon and behave in this way.

It must have been off one of the side streets, up the hill. I had no idea where it was when I walked along the main road, half-heartedly trying to remember.

With an irony that makes one choke, the Castro is often called the ‘Mecca’ of the gay community. Rainbow flags, tactile male couples, gay sex shops, including one boasting a six foot phallus, clearly mark out the area as a unique part of the city.

I sat down at an outside café and opened a conversation with a middle aged woman. Well, I say woman but I wasn’t really sure. Nevertheless, there was something definitive about the hairstyle and lips, and the hat she wore, as well as the boots, that left me feeling that even if she wasn’t a woman, she wanted to be taken as one. Such suspicions were confirmed when I saw her chest protruding beneath her shirt.

I wanted to know if she lived in the Castro (she did) and, as one does, asked her what she ‘did’. She told me she bought and restored old vehicles and pointed proudly to the 1972 BMW parked nearby. I mentioned my mother’s Morris Minor, which is slightly older than I am, and we moved onto the subject of driving in the States. Yes, I should definitely hire a car if I want to see Yosemite as the buses don’t go to enough places there. There is far more to it than the valley, after all.

Unlike herself, who liked to drive manually operated vehicles, I told her I preferred automatics and that I was, yes, confident driving on the wrong side of the road.

It seems she has lived in the area for decades; has seen the house prices rocket, as elsewhere, and along with the gentrification, witnessed a far more mixed and heterosexual, even family based, demographic moving in. She spoke with a certain nostalgia, a sense of loss, as if the best days had gone.

I asked about the hippy era and learnt she’d been in the thick of it, a genuine 17 year old flower child. That made me think of one of those cute little maidens swaying in the breeze, smoking pot and staring into space that one can see on old footage, but all the while I continued to be unsure about her gender. It wasn’t just the things she said. It was something about the way she held her head and spoke, how she moved her hands, and later how she walked, as well as some unidentifiable quality in the face that intimated male with more than mild conviction. My uncertainty then became whether she’d had a sex change, and if so with what degree and kind of surgery or hormone therapy. Or was she a true born hermaphrodite, a type of individual which, apparently, is far more numerous than one might suppose. Or was she a he and dressing up?

I’ve read somewhere how young babies can instinctively determine, long before they can speak or even see properly and simply from the outline of the human body, whether adults or even other children are male or female. I forget how the scientists established this but I certainly remember always being aware of this reputedly crucial divide. When we meet people, long before we decide if we like them or not - though perhaps not before we decide they’re a threat or not- we categorise them as male or female, a designation centrally influencing how we relate to them.

Maybe that was why I felt so weird talking to her. Something basic in my mind’s orientation hadn’t been configured. I felt lightheaded and giddy, uncertain of my stance. Evidently, in some fundamental way, I do not talk to women as I do to men. So how should I talk if I don’t know who I’m talking to?

If you’re a prickly, politically correct sort of person whose habit is to get offended on other people’s behalf, you may want to suppose it's insulting of me to question a woman’s gender just because she seems a bit male.

Thing is, while we were discussing the evolving indeterminacy of sexual orientation and identity (again, as one does), it was she herself who declared that I had probably noticed something uncertain about her gender. To which I, sensing her kindness and strength, replied, yes, and that I still wasn’t sure if she was a man or a woman, a frankness that didn’t throw her at all.

Apparently, so she told me, I have to learn not to care about such things.

Subterranean Afternoon

One day in North Beach I gravitated to a British pub, presumably out of some kind of patriotic impulse. Nothing about the venue’s decor was British, everything Thai, but the waitress charmed me which compensated, especially in light of the five pints of British ale I sank.

For some reason, to do with my libido I should think, I found myself going into a strip joint round the corner.

Not getting ripped off in such venues is a significant duty, I find. It makes one feel less of the loser that with due reason one is supposed to feel oneself to be for venturing into such domains in the first place. I was told it would only cost me ten bucks and though I knew damn well it wasn’t supposed to only cost me ten bucks, I determined that it would indeed only cost me ten bucks.

Oddly enough, they didn’t persuade me to break my pledge by offering me a beer, but imposed a no booze, endlessly free soda ruling that baffled and bored. The puritanical underbelly of the American psyche, presumably, can not be truly escaped, not even in the company of dancing, semi-naked flesh.

Usually in Europe in these places, which I attend far less frequently that you might imagine, the dancers will leave you alone for awhile before swooping in for the high intensity, personalised pitch. Here I was entreated no sooner than I’d laid eyes on the main event. No rest for the wicked, so it seems.

For 60 dollars, I was repeatedly told, despite my gentlemanly assurance that I only wanted to watch, that I could go upstairs for a private show in the VIP room. All but one of the women were relatively easy to turn down, but the last had eyes redolent of misty mountains and a touch and a smile to be killed for. Very tempting, though what would have happened in the privacy upstairs wasn’t explained and will now never be known.

I left with my ten dollar dignity in tact, which left me feeling oddly triumphant, as it happens. One girl had asked for a dollar bill, which I thought very reasonable of her, but alas I lacked change and she vanished.

The Haight and The Bridge

I never got to drive up and down San Fran’s crazy angles. I just had to wander. Haight Ashbury’s Victorian mansions were colourfully fun. They line the streets of a district of America where anarchist bookshops make ambitious claim to a tradition of left beam radicalism one might struggle to find elsewhere.

I missed one of the walking tours promising to take me to the sight of 67’s famous ‘Be In’, but enjoyed the armchairs in the consciously chilled cafes, smelt the Mary Jane from the joints of the disheveled, and felt, somehow, the glimmer of the past, collective, experimental event. But its essence was dispelled by 68, so I learnt, not long after it began, routed by the commodifiable consequences of its success. Stick a label and a category on something and the shadow will fall. This we know.

A little later I took a walk from Fisherman’s Wharf to the Golden Gate Bridge. Supposing California’s sun would be no match for Kuwait’s, I wasn’t expecting my face to get burnt as I lay down in green grass for a rest along my way.

Since its construction in the 1930s, over a thousand people have leapt to their deaths from the iconic Bay- spanning landmark. There’s a film called ‘The Bridge’ all about it. Debate mounts over what can be done, whether or not fencing it off, which would no doubt happen in Europe, would too drastically interfere with civil liberties and views of the Bay (which are wondrous). Meanwhile, emergency telephones offer avenues for indecision, and bold, macabre signs, conceivably encouraging as much as discouraging in their effects, read ‘the consequences of jumping from this bridge are fatal and tragic’.

Personally, peering over at the succulent, soft, shimmering curls of the water beneath, I didn’t think that was obvious at all, but maybe I’ve seen too many movie stars launching themselves from gallant heights.

I wonder, with respect, if any of those who died were just wanting a swim and fancied their skills as a diver.

Reflecting

Being now back from America, I wonder now if it is too late to write about my time there.

I shall try. But not in this entry.

The below is perhaps something I 'should' not have written.

Recently a friend commented that my posts tend to be unstructured, and too absorbed in the mere presentation of the workings of my psyche; of interest, no doubt, to me (this is true) but not really, in his estimation, to the general reader. He even summoned up the analogy of a man talking to himself on a bus to represent why I may not be of much appeal.

This has discouraged me and made me wonder that this may be the reason, rather than just bad luck or cosmic injustice, why I get far fewer comments than he does (yes, I know, it remains to be argued why quantity of comments necessarily signifies much anyway). He even suggested that I might find it difficult to change, which led me to wonder whether he felt that I should give up the whole blogging enterprise. Maybe I will.

I am thinking that the context in which to situate his reaction involves two questions. First, is he correct in saying I am unstructured, and very self-absorbed, or self-revolving. Second, if he is correct, does this matter? This second question implies, for me, the related question: am I boring as a writer, especially to those who don't know me from my personal life.

Ultimately, the practical corollary of this is: Should I change, and if so how should I justify this to myself in terms other than that I have merely submitted to his critique?

It is an awkward, slightly painful issue. I have always had difficulty accepting criticism. I don’t know why. Maybe it is a response to a perceived lack of needed love. Or maybe it’s because I am grossly narcissistic and imperialistic, as it were, Caligula to anyone who would question my self-imagined glory (yet this would not be an answer in-itself, but must be explained at a deeper psychological level). For some reason, I am inclined to identity a focussed criticism of some aspect of my existence with its entire refutation; a defensive all-or-nothing engagement with my critic that can leave me struggling for my life. Presumably, this would be put down to some kind of core ontological insecurity.

Often I go on the offensive, which is probably extremely annoying to my critic. I sometimes want to get the critic to examine the basis or bases of his criticism such that he might then question it or even withdraw it. This won’t necessarily mean that I denied all validity to what he said but is I think an attempt to abridge the abyss of separation that I often note arising when a critic resorts to pass judgement.

Oh well, I told him I might try to be more objective, but I wonder if I do this how this blog might start to become less and less mine and more that of an abstracted, fictional persona; you know, the kind we use to write academic essays, or to write to relatives out of duty, or to the bank manager.

I suppose as in much, the answer between internal and external, subjective and objective, personal and public, is balance.

What do I know, apart from that 2+2 is 4 (because of the rules implicit in the terms we use).