fear//make.french.toast

It is finals week here in college world! What an in to a discussion of FEAR.

I've been thinking about FEAR because I feel it, I'd say, 95% of the time, at least a little bit. A sense of FEAR seems to be perpetually looming. Both its presence and its absence come in waves. The FEAR waves just permeate less suddenly, and for longer.

hello i am either FEAR or no FEAR!!!!!!!!!

In the past two days, FEAR has turned from a feeling to an explicit thought. FEAR has ceased soaking the background of my consciousness and is now dripping in a puddle of its own pee downstage. FEAR is wet; like liquid, it pours. And recently, FEAR has been soaking up the spotlight–and is able to be seen through, for now. 

Flows of FEAR are usually followed by an ebb; now they are consciously monitored, analyzed, deliberated. Part of this temporary change, I think, was inspired by Liz Garbus' documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone? I had heard about the flick for a while, and decided to see for myself what all the speculation was about. I am not going to make the space here for the discussion that her life and legacy deserve, but I recommend that you watch the doc. 

FEAR is also centerstage, downstage to Garbus' investigation into the musician's life and career. It is often humbling to remember that FEAR affects most people, even those who seem to have no reason to fear anything at all.

Maybe that's the relationship! I thought. Maybe it's as direct as that:

freedom = no FEAR. 

The absence of FEAR leads to freedom; freedom is only experienced in the absence of FEAR.

In appreciation of the human ability to THINK about THOUGHTS, I wrote a little thing:

what I could do if I had no fear!

how would i do it?:

extract the amygdala there are two and they are almonds but especially on the right

side 

rip it out 

with the fear of anaphylaxis from the one allergic

to tree nuts.

FEAR ancestors who were fearful lived by skirting

situations and saying 'that does not seem safe' while hiding

in caves.

but we are safe! we are safe in piles of laundry

still with this fear of having

nothing to put it into nothing

to promise a ripping out of.

it comes to malaise

I BECOME the cave.

think about my strange position!:

I am not the one seeking shelter;

I am not the predator;

I am the cave!

just standing and people

may visit. looking

for something.

i may see threat growing 

from the outside!

but i am standing

and i do not know how big I am.

I'm hoping to turn this stream of consciousness into a poem, but I believe that streams of consciousness are poems, too. 

This blog helps me face fear. By writing, I challenge fear with words. Every time I sit down to write a post, my syntax is shaking; I'm afraid that my points can't be articulated due to some inherent incapacity to communicate. 

But this is communicating.

I would like to think that the feeling will go away, that this will all get easier. Maybe for things to 'get easier', I will need to look straight through FEAR; maybe FEAR will go away when I look straight through it; maybe staring through what I don't want to even THINK about leads to freedom. 

If that 5% of the time that I don't feel FEAR is freedom, I could quantify its existence by assessing if, somehow, the FEAR waves begin to ebb 6%, 10%, 50% of the time.

If I could have that, half of my life, no fear.

If you are soaking in fear, try soaking bread instead. Ready for french toast, love?

VEGAN FRENCH TOAST RECIPE. 

IN CAPITALIZED COURIER TYPEFACE.

LET ME TELL YOU,IT ALL BEGINS WITH A BANANA IN SOYMILK AND FEAR.

this recipe does, anyway.

VEGAN FRENCH TOAST ON A SUNDAY.

INGREDIENTS: 

-2 slices of hard, stale bread that you were about to throw away before you saw this. (I used wimpy bread. I should have used hard, stale bread. There's where the name comes from, after all: pain perdu, or "lost bread".)

-1 nanner (banana yeh)

-1 cup soymilk or whatevermilk.

-cinnamon, vanilla extract, and nutmeg to taste.

PROCEDURE: 

1.) Pour whatever walk of milk you have in a blender or food processor. I used a nutribullet and am lucky to have one.

2.) Tear your nanner in 3 or 4 pieces and drop them in that lovely pool of whatevermilk. I feel like "tear" is not apt for describing what I advise you do to the banana.

3.) Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg in there, too.

4.) Blend all that up in your handy machine.

hah! get it? handy?

5.) Pour that mixture into a bowl and dip your (not wimpy) bread into it.

 

+

wimpy bread from Wegmans.

=

6.) Pour oil or butter in a pan. Remember to keep it vegan if you want to keep this recipe vegan. Vegetable oil, canola oil, and butter are good alternatives to animal products.

have no fear! the wimpy bread soaked it up already!

Shamir//expectations//extraordinary

"It doesn't get darker unless you expect it to."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XoGrh9eL9Y

A few posts back, we discussed "the banality of evil," a term coined by Hannah Arendt. 

It refers to the simplicity of "evil" acts; sometimes people kill others for the sole purpose of making money.

Adolf Eichmann, who Hannah Arendt observed during his 1961 trial in Jerusalem, organized the Nazis' train schedules--he planned the shipment of prisoners to concentration and extermination camps. 

But what if he wasn't ideologically committed to Third Reich maxims? What if he didn't believe in the superiority of the Aryan race?

Does that make him any less evil than Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor or head of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (modern-day Czech Republic), who spoke outright of the inferiority of all other races?

Is Adolf Hitler "evil" for what he did?

He rationalized his ideologies in his head. They made sense, somehow.

What if these three men committed "evil" for everyday reasons, just like someone mugging another on the street, trying to make some cash to feed a family?

I don't condone these crimes; I just think it's important to look at them through more than one dimension, and not to hasten characterizing the wholes of individuals by their acts.

We are much more intricate than that.

And I put evil in "" because I don't know what to call it.

ANYWAY

Today on an elevator, thinking of Arendt, I thought,

banality of good.

Think about it. On streets we pass samaritans and CEOs, hear them talk on phones. These two archetypes have done "good" in two archetypal ways. They have:

1.) Saved lives/supported others through struggle, even in the smallest ways (I'll call this "humanitarian good")

2.) Become financially successful and/or societally esteemed (and this, "the capitalist's good"...lol)

Again, these people are everywhere. Maybe I'm preoccupied with anonymity because I'm back in New York City.

And I'm distancing myself from humanity (and hoping that you, the reader do so for the remainder of this post, too) because I dig writing like I'm not part of humanity; like I'm a wide-eyed observer. 

We all observe, and often respond with inflections of the tongue or compassionate countenances. I'm responding with a manifesto.

 So, these particularly exceptional people--we may overhear them complaining to their mother on the phone, gossiping to a friend on a park bench, whispering under the sandpapering of leaves--exceptional people don't have to be exceptional all the time, and that fascinates me.

Or we may see a billionaire drop his Mister-Softee-vanilla-sprinkly-cone on cement, get showered by the Washington Square Park fountain, be unable to conceal her sweaty pits.

How can someone who's succeeded in life, done something many college kids I know are anxious about (made money), be so...normal. It doesn't match my gleaming idea of 

(I love you stock)

Not that I value the title "CEO" above any other financial status/vocation. The extreme success of its reputation, however, fits to dispel my illusions with the greatest magnitude; the name makes the banality of good, or normalcy, pure humanity of the "good" individual, even more banal.

The tugs between society and the individual.

Is good banal, then? Is anything banal?

Recently I read a quote: "Their lives would have been an art of living" (Perec, 23).

How is any moment less than extraordinary?

The fact that I ask this question leads me to reason one of my greatest pet peeves.

when I hear life brushed off like it's nothing, I feel dehumanized, dirty, saggy, wrong.

But I brush it off, too.

"How was your day?"

"Eh, whatever."

Maybe I'm afraid that it really is whatever.

Always, though, I come back to the extraordinaries.

Those who have done "good," but act like anyone else.

The contrasts between reputation and person are extraordinary.

Maybe we brush off life because we're subconscious and self-conscious; we know how extraordinary it could be if we just went about seeing it differently.

IF we allowed ourselves to relish in the ordinary. Anything can become ordinary if we forget to call it extraordinary.

"oh, I work for the CIA, no biggie."

as a child that was your dream, and now you do it.

for hours you fantasize of lunch, and then you eat it.

you interview for 27 jobs, and score the one you most wanted.

then you go to work.

If we stood forever awestruck at the incarnation of illusion, I guess we wouldn't get much work done.

But I got this done.

We're all extraordinary, then. This is the only logical conclusion. Sorry.

how I remind myself to practice "the art of living":

it's rice and tomatoes. 

"it doesnt get darker unless you expect it to."

Works Cited

Perec, Georges. Things: A Story of the Sixties. (David R. Godine: Boston, 1990).