A repost of a repost of a riposte: BigMuscle.com 6

I no longer feel the need to introduce this series. If you want to read the others, click the Bigmuscle bigtab.

11 June 2003

Where do we begin, and where does the other leave off? Can we answer this question, or do we sometimes feel like love is joining flesh into seamless flesh at points of contact like joined twins? In the beginning, this union is exhilarating. Later it's stifling as you find yourself trapped in another's skin, in another's desires, inside another's flesh and expectations, and the only way to escape is to chop off the other like you would your own arm. (The metaphor extends: later after the amputation of the other, the remainder can feel less like the phantom itch on the hand that no longer exists than the urge to reach or gesture with a limb that isn't there, that is no longer attached, no longer a part but apart.)

But this metaphor covers over another: the union of the dyad is how it feels to the organism, on the other hand how the relation functions is another matter entirely. What is this metaphor that gets lost under the satisfactions and frustrations and loathings and self-loathings of loving and hating? The metaphor is one of reflection. We see ourselves in the mirror of the other without recognizing who we are looking at--and that indeterminate who is left open, because the me or I we misrecognize covers over the other's "me," and we never see him because we see what we want to see, which is further complicated by the fact that we almost never have conscious awareness of what we want to see in an other in the first place. This is best illustrated in the way we loathe another person because he has traits that we loathe in ourselves, yet we never recognize him as being like us, as being akin; as we do when we see ourselves in a mirror looking unflattering, we turn away with a pained look of disgust. We turn away from ourselves. And so we never see. This dynamic lays bare the dynamic of Love.

A repost of a repost of a riposte: BigMuscle.com 5

To see the other BigMuscle.com meditative reposts, you can start at the beginning or go to the last one. I suggest the former, but you are, of course, allowed to do whatever the hell you want. It is the Internets, after all. This is the fifth in the series.

11 June 2003

Where do we begin, and where does the other leave off? Can we answer this question, or do we sometimes feel like love is joining flesh into seamless flesh at points of contact like joined twins? In the beginning, this union is exhilarating. Later it may be stifling as you find yourself trapped in another's skin, in another's desires, inside another's flesh and expectations, and the only way to escape is to chop off the other like you would your own arm. (The metaphor extends: later after the amputation of the other, the remainder can feel less like the phantom itch on the hand that no longer exists than the urge to reach or gesture with a limb that isn't there, that is no long attached, no longer a part but apart.)

But this metaphor covers over another: the union of the dyad is how it feels to the organism, on the other hand how the relation functions is another matter entirely. What is this metaphor that gets lost under those satisfactions and frustrations and loathings and self-loathings of loving and hating? The metaphor is one of reflection. We see ourselves in the mirror of the other without recognizing who we are looking at--and that indeterminate who is left open, because the me we misrecognize covers over the other's "me" (or "I"), and we never see him because we see what we want to see, which is further complicated by the fact that we almost never have conscious awareness of what we want to see in an other in the first place. This is best illustrated in the way we loathe another person because he has traits that we loathe in ourselves, yet we never recognize him as being like us, as being akin; much as we do when we see ourselves in a mirror looking unflattering; we turn away with a pained look of disgust. We turn away from ourselves. And so we never see. This dynamic lays bare the dynamic of Love.

A repost of a repost of a riposte: BigMuscle.com 4

Am I freaking your shit out yet?

Please don't read this.

This is the fourth in a series on BigMuscle.com, which began as a sort of running critique of BigMuscle on BigMuscle. Most people on that site didn't give a damn about what I was saying, but I got some nice comments on those posts from time to time, nonetheless. You could read the first posts for context, but in this fearful new online universe all the choices are yours. Aren't they?

Don't read the first and second and(slash)or third posts.

13 May 2003

The mouth is an eye. Indeed, the mouth is the first eye, before even the eye is the eye (and our language reinforces this: we "drink" others with our eyes, or more aggressively, we "devour" them with our eyes). For all intents and purposes, the mouth is the original orifice through which we experience the world, though intent and purpose are very confused for the infant, of course; it can be said that neither exist initially because there is only this unnamed thing called "Hunger," and the care-giver, who takes it away. It seems like a pure dyad. Who knows what it is like for the infant, who perhaps is only capable of seeing the care-giver through the eye of its mouth without ever knowing it, itself, exists. Is this why we sometimes only feel we exist when we see another, and why the gaze of another carries such power over us? One reason, anyway. If we feel we don't exist, perhaps seeing another is enough. Perhaps being seen is enough. And here we have returned to the gaze again.

But to stay with the mouth, the first interface, the place that teaches us most cogently about inside and outside, about hunger, nourishment, and never far behind (how can it ever be very far behind?) love: that intimacy of the mouth, that enveloping warmth of feeding, being surrounded by the arms and body of the care-giver, warm, and warmth flowing inside through the mouth, the mouth which sees before the infant's eyes can focus: this is love. And is this why when we press our lips to those of another we do it to show love? How very queer indeed.

A repost of a repost of a riposte: BigMuscle.com 3

Please don't read this.

A long while ago, I posted two installment about BigMuscle.com--this is the third in a long series of such online vomitus, which began as a sort of running critique of BigMuscle on BigMuscle. Needless to say, most people on that site didn't give a damn about what I was saying, but I got some nice comments on those posts from time to time, nonetheless. To get the proper effect, you should really read the first ones, but hey, this is the Internet, and I sure can't make you read anything you don't want to read.

Don't read the FIRST and SECOND posts.

16 April 2003

One way we can engage with the question of who we are is to think about our relations to another, to the other, if you like. And again, we might return to the question of jockeying for the other's gaze, for his glance, his stare, or his appraisal--however one may read that eye on one's body. But beneath this notion, like the submerged frozen mountain under the iceberg's salient tip, there is another question, a literal question in one sense, in that what we are asking, what we are always asking in our dancing before this other eye, in our dialogues and questions, in our choice of clothing, haircut, gym, and workout schedule, all which always have to do with love, and that question of love is formulated every time, is implicit in all our convoluted gestures, words, and sighs: What do you want from me?

This question, and the ways we have attempted its answering, the ways we imagine it being answered, has everything to do with who we think we are and who we want others to think we are and who we want to think we are--which, of course, are never the same thing no matter how much overlap occurs among the three. But we do all this work because we imagine it is what the other wants, what the other wants from us, what we need to do, for example, to get all those eyes turned in our virtual direction, all those eyes listed in a Who Likes Me list that are saying, Yes. This much, here, this is what I want from you. And all along, no matter the satisfying frisson of that growing number of eyes rising like some thermometer measuring our heat, we never know what that thing is that has hooked the eye of the gaze. We never know what the other really wants. We always disappoint and are always disappointed.


Don't read the FIRST and SECOND posts.

A repost of a repost of a riposte: BigMuscle.com 2

Please don't read this.

I while ago, I wrote an installment on BigMuscle.com, which included my first rumination on said site. This is the second such vomitus. To get the proper effect, you should really read the first one first. But hey, this is a 'blog. Do whatever the fuck you want, killah.

I GUESS I REALLY WANT TO READ THE FIRST POST NOW <--click here 4 April 2003

For the male homosexual the central question always has something to do with the Feminine and his relationship to it. We say it is a question and as such it remains an open question for the individual but also in a general sense. The subject attempts to close this question for himself in any number of ways, and so answer it. And there are a series of standard responses, which for our purposes here we will term generic. Which genre the subject works toward has everything to do with his acceptance of the Feminine, his rejection of it, or most dramatically, its abjection. The subject may find satisfaction in the performance of the feminine, both or either the admiration of it or the imitation of it. Conversely, or would it be better to say obversely, he may instead build a fortress against it, a truly self-containing fortress in his mind and often times of his body. From here he may resist all the doubts that lay siege to his composure, his artful, careful composition. But in the long run, we do not really know what the Homosexual is, we can only discern whom he doesn't want to be.

NOW I WISH I'D READ THE FIRST BIGM POST (you still can!) <-- click here

A repost of a repost of a riposte: BigMuscle.com

Hey lady, you lady, cursing at your life....

Have you ever heard of BigMuscle.com? I've been "on" it for a while, and, after working in interactive for years, and being on a million sites (okay, a hundred, at least), I find it difficult to represent myself, well, with sincerity, on, um, anything online. I said "difficult." My great problem with Internet culture, and blogs especially, is that everyone is trying so hard to give up who they are, when everyone else is making a disposable identity. This makes for a bad dichotomy. It's as if half the world were writing memoirs and the other half were writing novels. And I mean this avowadly so in the first instance, and implicitly so in the second. This is the perfect example of how media has changed in an extraordinory way in the last fifteen years. Truth-claims for writing, whether online or elsewhere, have become very confused, but the online world is more and less sophisticated than the print-world: its boundaries are much more flexible. While we might be pissed off that that certain someone is not whom he or she said she or he would be online, we have learned to relax about it some; yet if a memoirist confesses to amplifying, extending, or even, yes, lying about his or her life on Oprah (or anywhere else [and where else does this happen, exactly?]), readers take great umbrage. (Alas, our current President and most others in elected government are held to a lesser standard.)

I don't know why this happens. Online, we let go of someone's misrepresentation (depending on one's experience and history), but on paper it's much more serious--it means something. Is the money we've paid for the paper and the incredibly well-financed cover and the PR the thing that prevents us from seeing a memoir as a story or as entertainment? And should we believe that any autobiography or biography is anything but a story? And lastly is any history anything but a story?

I had a few of these things in mind way back in 2003 when I wrote my first self-critical post on BigMuscle.com. To tell this story, however, I should tell two others first: the earlier is that I have a background in literary theory, cultural criticism, and psychoanalysis, so if you dislike one or all three of these options, you should probably stop reading now because my take will bore you. Latterally, BigMuscle is a funny "community" that allows you to post a profile with a number of pictures; it also requires your physical stats, including your geographical location; allows you to say as much as you might ever want textually, even, as some do, in a blog-style format; and lastly allows you to link out to other BigMuscle profiles, even in the thousands, so that your reader can see who you "like" in what in some cases is a vast list at the bottom of the your profile page.

So, here I offer up my first real post on BigMuscle. Read at your own risk.

Undated Winter 2003

We begin with the question of the gaze. Although the mouth is our first point of interaction with the world, and as much as orality typifies the way we greedily suck images inside ourselves as though they were some form of nourishment, it is a feeding that never satisfies. We begin instead with the gaze not in terms of our own looking but, naturally, the gaze of another, which, unlike our looking, does bring a kind of satisfaction with its own compliment of frustration and addiction. We throw ourselves at the world in fragments hoping to hook an eye, catch the gaze of another whose appraisal--of desire, delight, disgust, derision, or dread--will only feed something inside ourselves that demands that attention. We anxiously link out to other bodies we've constructed--bodies of words and disassembled parts--hoping to evoke a kind of wholeness, to trick the other and therefore ourselves into buying this wholeness with the coin of his gaze. But just as every signifier refers to every other signifier--and never to itself--we become lost in the web of signification, never finding a resting spot, a ground to stand on, a place that stays still, a signified. Or as Max Frisch says in one of his famous diaries, "I have only sought to explain myself but find I have only betrayed myself."

So, are you still looking?

OH YES, I JUST HAVE TO READ THE SECOND INSCRUTABLE BIGM POST!!