Relationships

Left home at 3:00 o'clock Saturday morning. Don't usually go to bed until 1:00 or 2:00 anyway so stayed up Friday night. Flew out around 6:30 from San Francisco. Got about an hour of sleep on the plane before I woke up to the distinct feeling of blood running down my thighs, and not for the last time. I think I broke records for soiling my undies on this stupid trip. I haven't bled on myself so much in, well, ever. One of the hardest periods I've ever had with very limited abilities to do anything about it. Embarrassing, humiliating, and aggravating all at once. Color me red and completely unthrilled to be a woman.

Time starts getting foggy about the time we hit JFK in New York for a five hour layover. Promptly got separated. He went to look at timetables and I bee-lined for the restroom. Got out and he was nowhere to be found. Our flight to JFK had been going to Istanbul, so I somehow got it in my head that that's where we were heading so off I went to Gate 7 to wait for him. About an hour later I gave up and went back to look for him near the restroom. Sure enough, he was right where I'd been looking for him in the first place. The sleep deprivation was really starting to kick in at this point.

Five hour layover at JFK then an impossibly long ride across the ocean. Got the middle row so was completely impossible to sleep. Completely. Not fucking kidding. I can't sleep sitting up. I have to curl up on my side. Period. Meanwhile, Mr. Happy slept soundly next to me for pretty much the entire trip. But I didn't want to kill him or anything. Smug, well rested sonofabitch; I can't remember the last time I've resented someone so much.

It's 11:00 AM Sunday morning when we arrive in Budapest. The taxi ride was uneventful and I was struck by how not very different things were here. Everywhere we go, American music is playing. The cars drive on the right side of the road, although there is a white line in the middle of the road instead of a yellow, making it impossible for me to tell which roads were one-ways and which had oncoming traffic. Of course, the oncoming traffic made that pretty clear pretty quickly. The roads are a bit on the narrow side, too. I'm just happy I'm not driving.

So, um, yeah. The last time I remember sleeping is Thursday night. I've bled through my keeper and panties five or six times and I'm so tired I can't see straight and I'm starting to hallucinate. By all means, let's go tour the fucking city. Asshole. Did I mention that I hated his well rested ass for a day or so there? Needless to say, Sunday was not a happy day. Saw some cool shit but really couldn't muster the enthusiasm or energy to care.

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Moving right along, I got some sleep Sunday night. Thank god. Lots of sleep. Luckily, the forced march through the city the day before had pretty much pushed all remaining blood out of my body and into my poor panties, so that issue more or less resolved itself. Nothing like getting your period over in 2 days flat. Men. I hate them all right now.

Where was I? Oh yes, Monday. Monday was good. Refreshed, energized, and relatively cramp free; I was ready to explore. Good fucking thing, too, cuz I had no choice. There are an awful lot of hills here. Steep ones at that. Lots of stairs. But worth it. At the top of these particular stairs was a park. The first thing I found was the Philosopher's garden. Ah yes, Monday was definitely a reset point. This made me very happy. There were statues for Abraham, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tze, and some Egyptian looking character who from behind looked like a 1950's housewife complete with bouffant hairdo. Very strange. There were also spots for Ghandi, Saint Francis, and the Bhodi Dharma. There were signs explaining why their statues were gone, but I couldn't read them. Anyone here speak Hungarian to translate? All I can make out is that something happened in April of 2007 and that money is somehow involved (the forint is the local currency).

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Further up the hill were more statues, these ones in miniature. I've never seen so many statues in my life as I have here. I love it. They are everywhere. This diorama was particularly interesting as it seemed to tell some epic tale of love, longing, and separation; as well as some cataclysmic world changing event which caused a rift in the world and between the man and woman. I wish I knew the story, but I don't mind wondering, either. Food for the imagination, and a wonderful presentation.

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At the top of the hill above the park was the Citadel, a fortress and hotspot for the last days of World War II. The history is a bit confusing, but it seems like Russia and Germany were basically fighting for the territory. Russia eventually won and promptly put up statues of communist victory everywhere. When Hungary broke away from communism, instead of destroying the statues, they moved them all into a special park as a memorial to communist ambition. I hope to visit later in the week.

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It was the first time I'd ever been in a World War II museum. It was rough. I never cared much for history, but this was real life, lived by real people. The pictures made me cry. Especially the children. War is so senseless, so insane, and so close. We are not above it, nor far removed. We create war and destruction today because we don't know, we don't care, we don't understand the horror. We've never seen it. We are spoiled, us Americans. Spoiled, blind, and arrogant. Meanwhile,we blithely destroy entire civilizations to better our bottom line. Civilizations with people. People like us. People who die. People who have children. Children that die. And for what, and why?

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Moving right along, we wandered the ramparts and grounds of the fortress, taking pictures of the ever present statuary and fooling around on the anti aircraft guns on the grounds. Nothing like sitting in a rusty chunk of heavy metal to put you in the place of the desperate soldiers futilely trying to defend their home. Apparently, the Citadel was supposed to be an anti aircraft defense station, but it didn't really work out that way. The few guns they had were ineffective and they never managed to install more.

Back down the hill, we walked across one of the many bridges over the Danube and hopped a trolley to take us a bit downstream. That's one thing I really love about this place. The public transportation system rocks, and is well used. We bought a weekly pass, which gets us on any form of public transportation we want, including the subway, buses, and trolleys/trams Â? all of which run every ten minutes or so. Very nice. You can get anywhere on public transportation here, and quickly, too. I have yet to see an empty bus, train, or trolley. In fact, it's often standing room only.

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Oh, that brings me to one of the better parts of yesterday. Actually, all of yesterday was just freaking incredible. I loved yesterday, especially in comparison to the day before, which I shall forthwith refer to as Â?mad MondayÂ?, cuz I was. Oh yes, but one of the highlights of my day was being able to help a fellow traveler. He was on the bus and I was kind of staring at him because I thought he was really hot. He came up to the front asking which doors to use for what and where to pay. We got off the bus at the station and I showed him where to go and how to get a ticket. It feels good to help people. Especially cute ones.

Had a lovely lunch on a boat on the banks of the Danube. The food was wonderfully rich and just downright decadent. Food here is kind of a crapshoot, but when it's good, it's amazing. Even when it's something I don't like, it's still amazing, and luckily there's two of us so it's pretty much a guarantee that one of us will enjoy it. Like I discovered that I do not like Roquefort salad dressing, but he does. I have difficulties with certain strong cheeses, while I love others. Like I said, it's a crapshoot. But I like to experiment and try new things, which makes traveling a delightful experience. Like an army, I travel on my stomach. It's all about the food tourism, baby...

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I kept seeing this awesome castle looking thing built into the side of a mountain and we finally got to go inside. It turned out to be a church, built into a cave. Wow. I wish I'd gotten better pictures, but pictures alone just can't convey the peace and tranquility of that cool, dark place. Curves and hollows and lamps and saints all mixed together to make a truly unique setting to worship. It's hard not to feel loved by god when enveloped in the embrace of the solid, unmoving earth. Fucking fantastic.

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So, after an amazing day of historical, culinary, and religious stimuli; we were able to wind down and relax in a world famous Turkish bath. Dear god, but that was wonderful. I love to soak, and public baths are like a gift from heaven. These had less jets and cooler pools than the ones I visited in Taiwan, but the pools were bigger and they had several sauna rooms, which were intense. I found that I could tolerate the sauna better after immersing myself in one of the ice water pools first for a few minutes, but I still found it difficult to breathe deeply through my nose because the heat burned the living hell out of my nasal passages. So I settled for short, shallow breaths.

All in all, 'twas a wonderful day. Only problem was, it never really ended. Got back to the hotel last night. He went to bed after checking his email then I tried to upload some photos to FaceBook. The first small batch went well, but then it failed on me three times after that. Then I got into chat conversations with my mom and ex boyfriend and the next thing I know, it's five o'clock in the morning again. Fuck. Thank god he's in a meeting today and I can pretty much just fuck off on my own time. Let's hear it for leisure. I think I'll go back and see if the maid is done making up the room so I can get online and post this bad boy. With pictures. That should use up a couple more hours. I just wish the internet cable reached all the way to the bed. I could use a nap.

Oh shit. Skip that. I forgot that I had a final to do and classes to register for. Yikes. Fuck me running.

Walking in two worlds: Logos vs. Mythos

In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche defines the greatest philosophical schism in history in terms of Apollo versus Dionysus, two Greek Gods who represented Order and Chaos, loosely. To me, this can also be seen as the struggle for supremacy of the conscious versus the unconscious, the rational versus the irrational, and reason versus emotion. As someone with equally strong right brain and left brain tendencies, I have been obsessed with this dichotomy all semester.

Since the time of the Greeks, the Western world has had its gaze firmly affixed upon the Apollonian path of logic, science and reason, insisting that everything must be proven and ordered in order to be valid. Nietzsche, however, insists that there is more to reality than reason alone and maintains that achieving a Dionysian ecstatic state brings one into line with the collective, with the communal, the universal, which takes one out of oneself and connects one to the greater principle, or the hidden, truer reality - "his own condition complete oneness with the essence of the universe."[1]

Reading the Tao, however, added to my suspicions that there was more to this dualism than I had seen even with Nietzsche. Specifically, the concept of yin and yang brought an even deeper level of understanding to the concepts of duality and balance, almost a meta level. I could now tie in the Apollonian with hot male yang controlling energy, anxious to put structure and meaning onto reality, whereas the cool Dionysian feminine principle instead seems to coexist effortlessly with the spirit of existence. From the Tao:

"The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.
So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes down.
Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency."[2]

The Tao also shed more light on what I suspect may be another way to tap into the Dionysian state of existence, aside from Nietzsche's single track focus on music. Each philosophical path seems to have a slightly different version of the same theme, an ecstatic, shamanic offshoot that rejects the path of reason and embraces instead the oft shunned path of intuition and faith. In Hinduism, it is bhakti yoga. In Buddhism, it is mindfulness. In Taoism, it is letting go. For Nietzsche, the Dionysian satyr "was man's true prototype, an expression of his highest and strongest aspirations. For the Greek the satyr expressed nature in a rude, uncultivated state:"[3] Lao Tsu also emphasizes nature and emotion, as "the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees."[4]

Being back in college and living the life I do has put dualism in my face in a big way. Not only do I have the typical angst over choosing a major but I have had the misfortune of having my past rear its not so ugly head up at me, tempting me back into paths long forgotten. For years, I was a corporate whore; a depressed, technology addicted, fat, angry, anal retentive, pill popping, controlling, micro managing, bitter yuppie bitch. I had money. I had challenging work. But I hated everything about my life. I hated myself. There was this guy. He was the smartest man I'd ever met. I was the smartest woman he'd ever met. But we weren't necessarily compatible in a one-one relationship. It turned out he was happier without me. He decided to leave the country, to follow his dreams and go to South Korea for a year to teach English. I had no one. Nothing. I'd moved to Boulder with him because he'd gotten a great tech job there. It felt like he'd yanked the world out from under my feet. I tried to kill myself.

That was the turning point of my life; the division between the me' that was and the me' who is. In a very real way, I did kill that unhappy bitch that day. We have very little in common. I spent the last five years actively running away from my left brain and trying to cultivate my right brain instead. With great success, I have since managed to switch hemisphere dominance to become such a different person that I normally forget how much I've changed or how far I've come until events remind me of that distant past. I'm a happy, dreamy, giddy, free thinking, creative free spirit. I have friends now. I have a great life. I look ten years younger. I'm getting in touch with my body and my spirituality. No one who knows me now would ever guess that I once was so anal retentive that I literally didn't fart for five years.

So, again, I meet a guy. He's one of the smartest men in the world, a math genius. He's the god of the geeks, a legend among those in the know, the virtual king of Logos, and the very prince of Apollonian reason. I've got a touch of that myself. I've never met anyone who could understand my formulas before. He inspires me to want to develop that side of my brain because I want so deeply to be able to have those kinds of conversations. His lifestyle, his home, his work; everything about him, however; reminds me of the life I left behind. And I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of money, too. He didn't understand how I could think that money was poison and that I could meet a better class of people when poor. I told him that, while not necessarily being a "better class"; poor people, in my experience, tend to have more heart; they have less to give but give more, proportionately. I find that I am truer, more honest, more connected when I have to depend on others than when I am totally comfortable and self reliant. Sometimes I want to quote Nietzsche at him:

For Nietzsche, suffering is the real truth of reality. The problem with tragedy to the logically minded, within a framework of absolutes is that it "calls into question the boundaries of ethical judgment that every moralist must define or assume."[5] The process of striving to clearly define and fit everything into perfect abstract forms leaves little room for flexible judgments or moral relativism, sophistry, as it were. In his introduction to The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche queries whether the Western resolve to be so overly scientific about everything indicates fear, an avoidance of ugly reality, a certain inability to face the truth.

Nietzsche goes on to propose a society which he calls a tragic culture, where "wisdom takes the place of science as the highest end wisdom that, uninfluenced by the seductive distractions of the sciences, turns with unmoved eyes to a comprehensive view of the world, and seeks to grasp, with sympathetic feelings of love, the eternal suffering as its own."[6] I can almost hear him, and all those other logically minded types I love so much, laughing at the very idea.

But now I also want to quote the Tao:

"Give up learning and put and end to your troubles."[7] "In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less is done until non-action is achieved. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. The world is ruled by letting things take their course."[8] I've learned to slow myself down and blow things off. This is good for me. I actually get much more done this way. But how do I explain this? Lao Tsu would say that "Teaching without words and work without doing are understood by very few."[9] So perhaps I stop trying to explain. I either just do or I don't. Time will show whether it is effective or not.

Even suffering has its proper and needful place as "everyone else is busy, but I alone am aimless and depressed. I am different. I am nourished by the great mother."[10] Empty, I am filled. Sorrowing, I am comforted. I touch my pain deeply and am flooded with healing in return. "Be really whole, and all things will come to you."[11]

My writing provides me justification and direction. Even if I know not what I intend to do with it, as Nietzsche would say, "Poetry does not lie outside the world as a fantastic impossibility begotten of the poet's brain; it seeks to be the exact opposite, an unvarnished expression of truth"[12]. It is my therapy, as is most of my lifestyle. My writing, like my body work, is another devotion or yoga, another part of the path;

"The pathological discharge, the catharsis of Aristotle, of which philologists are not sure whether it should be included among medical or moral phenomena, recalls a remarkable notion of Goethe's. Without a lively pathological interest," he says, "I, too, have never yet succeeded in elaborating a tragic situation of any kind, and hence I have rather avoided than sought it. Can it perhaps have been yet another merit of the ancients that the deepest pathos was with them merely aesthetic play, while with us the truth of nature must cooperate in order to produce such a work? "[13]

True art can not be created from a formula; it must instead come from the deepest of suffering, a communal sharing of pain, "... the artistic development of the individual..., through an ecstatic reality which once again takes no account of the individual and may even destroy him, or else redeem him through a mystical experience of the collective. In relation to these immediate creative conditions of nature every artist must appear as "imitator," either as the Apollinian dream artist or the Dionysian ecstatic artist, or, finally... as dream and ecstatic artist in one. We might picture to ourselves how the last of these, in a state of Dionysian intoxication and mystical self-abrogation, wandering apart from the reveling throng, sinks upon the ground, and how there is then revealed to him his own conditioncomplete oneness with the essence of the universe"[14]

Here Nietzsche begins to emphasize balance, as does the Tao. I need to retain or reincorporate a certain amount of Apollonian principles to maintain right living, if I may playfully sneak a Buddhist term into the mix. I need to master my procrastination and not use these philosophies to slack my committed duties. Action is still required, and has the added benefit of removing fear and anxiety because since the sage "always confronts difficulties, he never experiences them."[15] The sage knows to "Deal with it before it happens. Set things in order before there is confusion."[16] A personally humorous reminder is that "Good binding requires no knots, yet no one can loosen it."[17] Taking care to do things correctly the first time, in a slow and measured manner, is another form of mindfulness and living in the moment. Letting go is not to be mistaken for carelessness or sloppiness as the sage "takes care of all things and abandons nothing."[18]

Further, I am reminded that we are all on different paths, or merely different parts of the same one, and that it is good to have patience with those whose views may be different. "Knowing others is wisdom; knowing the self is enlightenment. Mastering others requires force; mastering the self needs strength. He who knows he has enough is rich."[19]

I periodically hitchhike to restore my faith in humanity because I think that, ultimately, the divine can best be found in the random kindness of strangers. It's a need I have. To take myself down to nothing, strip away everything, in essence, to submit myself to the universe. I put myself on the line, and therefore, everything becomes more meaningful. It's all perception. This misery restores my faith in humanity by contrast. Nietzsche ascked "How can the ugly and the disharmonic, the content of the tragic myth, stimulate aesthetic pleasure? ...Even the ugly and disharmonic are part of an artistic game that the will in the eternal amplitude of its pleasure plays with itself."[20] Without the disharmonic, the harmonic would sound less melodic and without the ugly, the beautiful would be without form.

Sometimes life has to get pretty bad before it can be beautiful. But then that beauty outshines all the pain it resides in. Life is more immediate, more real when you're broke. Choices are more meaningful. People's power over you is increased, whether positive or negative. Fight or flight means something other than an obsolete survival reflex. I suppose life just seems more precious when it's the only commodity you've got. Perhaps that is why "the sage seeks freedom from desire. He does not collect precious things. He learns not to hold on to ideas. He does not grasp and therefore does not lose."[21] After the initial shock, I felt much freer after tossing the bulk of my possessions because, "he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough"[22] and I really do feel much lighter without so many things to drag me down. Less possessions means less things to worry about, as it turns out.

Perhaps it is all a matter of vulnerability, just like in sex. True growth and love can only be found by making ourselves vulnerable, open, and needy. "Yield and overcome; bend and be straight; empty and be full; wear out and be new; have little and gain; have much and be confused."[23] I admit to my state of less than perfection and offer up my raw wounds for inspection and display. We can't be helped, or touched, when we have everything we need. To be filled, there must be a hole. "But I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am. Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing. Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea, without direction, like the restless wind."[24] To throw oneself upon the mercy of the universe requires either an act of supreme faith or supreme desperation. But the universe provides, and always has. That's the lesson at the end of this. There is no end. There is no wrong way. There is no money. There is only the path. And I walk it with grace and faith because I know, somehow, that this is the way I'm supposed to go, and so I do.

Quotes

[1] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 2
[2] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 29
[3] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 8
[4] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 12
[5] John D. Barbour, Tragedy and Ethical Reflection, The Journal of Religion (1983), 3
[6] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 18
[7] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 20
[8] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 48
[9] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 43
[10] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 20
[11] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 22
[12] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 8
[13] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 22
[14] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 2
[15] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 63
[16] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 64
[17] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 27
[18] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 27
[19] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 33
[20] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 24
[21] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 64
[22] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 46
[23] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 22
[24] Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 20

Sources

Barbour, John D., Tragedy and Ethical Reflection. The Journal of Religion 1983. The University of Chicago Press http://mantis.csuchico.edu:2053/journals/ucpress.htm l

Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching. Translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. Vintage books edition, March 1997.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy. First publication, 1872: The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Second Edition, 1878: few textual changes. Third edition, 1886: "Attempt at a Self-Criticism," and new title, The Birth of Tragedy Or: Hellenism and Pessimism. Compiled from translations by Francis Golffing and Walter Kaufmann. Text amended in part by The Nietzsche Channel. http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/bt.htm