Protean Harajuku Barbie

i do now know
what to call
these different bits
coming together
combining and recombining.

i am different people
at different times
in different scenes.

it feels so true
that in my mind
i am protean.

but...is it a lie
to be so many?
or ultimate truth?

nicki minaj.
we see her---
but who is she?
onika maraj?
or cookie?
or harajuku barbie?
or roman?
or martha?
or rrrrrosa?
or niki teresa--the healer?
all of them?--
hmmm, yes,
i think so.

never being
always becoming
recombining the elements,
alter egos, personas...
whatever we call them.

"you are posessed!"
shouts the past.
but we are us,
true us,
in multiform wonder.

Is Second Life still...

Back in April the Woodbury sims were removed from SL and many connected to them were banned. Now while I am not in any way a supporter of anything, including content theft, that violated the TOS, I do wonder about something. If the talented rogues are into something, it is cutting edge...worthy of their interest. But their attentions may make life difficult for regular residents. If they are expelled, then they will just move on to something else. Then where does that leave the technology they have been forced out of? There is so much out there now, things blossom and fade seemingly overnight. So if we as upright citizens have supported the expulsion of some who trouble us, yet somehow make us relevant, does that make us irrelevant? By pushing our those who trouble us, we make our world safer, but without their talents, do we have what it takes to survive?

Wonder and Awe

This is from notes I prepared for a Second Life meeting which I missed.

My mind has always worked like this: it fixates on a topic, person, or thing that has come into view. The desire arises to know and experience everything about him/her/it, often at any cost. The wonder is over the perceived possibility that a connection can be made. The awe in that a wonder has arisen that I identufy as a Lacanian objet petit a. I get quite obsessed with my objet, to the extent of extending my meagre resources to gather all that I can if it into myself. Thus the objet as I perceive it becomes a part of me. When that happens, I bring forth fruit in imitation of it, whether in writing, or in drawing. When the obsession fades, the objet remains as a part of me that may be recalled and used at any time in the future.

Getting rid of attached books

Haaa! Here I am again in my library trying to get rid of books. It is sooo hard to do because each of them is attached to a personal narrative about time & place, interests long cherished, or to the person who gave them to me. So how do I break free from these narrative attachments? Well first I must single out the personas that serve as the focus of the narratives. The bits of identity that comprise "me" (Lacan's le corps morcele) have gathered into these chemical compound-y things. These personas, as I will call them for lack of a better term, are imprinted with an idealized image and labeled with a name, such as "me the scholar ...behind my Lennon-glasses I am wise and kind, always eager to study history and philosophy."

But these seemingly benign personas have trapped me. They are difficult to live up to, for one thing, and the bits of me that are excluded from their mix cry out for attention--and go off to form personas of their own. (Be quiet, Mariko! Not NOW!) That may be the norm in Second Life, where these personas can be given pixilated form, but in Real Life, this process becomes problematic. As narratives of support for or the failures of these personas weave themselves around them, they become like prisons.

So how can we free our identity from these personas, which grow in power as we use them in our interactions with others, and as narratives grow upon them like weeds? Julia Kristeva says we should use language to free ourselves from these bonds. We must disrupt our process of identifying with the personas we have created or have been created for us by the expectations of others. When we believe in and act out our narratives, we are in as much of a fantasy world as Oz or Middle Earth. The narratives are easy and comfortable habits to slip into, but they are self defeating as they keep us going around in circles, stuck in the same ruts. Help me, Julia! If I cannot be a sage like T'oegye, free from narrative attachment to the past or the future, at least let me have more conscious control over what I do have.

*Ahem*...anyway, to get back to the original problem, the personas that have attached to the narratives of why I am such a person who should like these topics or should read these books...today, here and now, I confront you! Monk, Renaissance scholar, Hermetic Philosopher, Wm. Blake scholar, JRRT lover, Bible student! You are not me! (What a presumptive collection!) All of you together have included in your make-up parts of me, but not some of the most important parts (like humor, general silliness &c)! Begone, I adjure and command you, in the name of the Thrice Great Hermes and his disciple Tat...(oops), ummm...I mean, in the name of Ozma, fairy soverign of the marvelous land of Oz! Ok, that's done, now...back to the books. Anyone want a 38 volume set of the Church Fathers?

Shadow People

All the bits of identity that we claim or reject (for the rejected bits still cling to us), are pulled into a human shape by Lacan's mirror. We get an imago of the "I" that we now come to believe exists. Ah! Someone has even given this "I" a name. So, equipped with this ideal image and name, we procede into life's tempests. Which bits of identity we include in this image/name construct, which I will call analog-I, are determined in each "now" by feedback from interaction with others.

But sometimes stronger forces are at work within us, often related to residual emotional content from out childhood. This content is often raw and pre-verbal, coming from a time when we did not have the mental capacity to process it. How then does this content affect our analog-I? If it is strong enough, or if it receives outside encouragement, other self-images may develope. These at first have the same name as we do, but over time may become self-named, for example Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta became Lady Gaga. But not all alternate analog-I's become so powerful. For the most part, they exist as shadow people, emerging only when the environment is safe for them to do so.

In a virtual world such as Second Life, the bits of our identity can be broken out of their analog-I and shadow people shells more easily than in real life because their are more options and opportunities for us to really "build" ourself. Some people take a safe route and reproduce an idealized version of their real existence; others pick one of their shadow people that they have always wished to display, but for whaterer reason were unable to do so in real. Even those who experiment radically with image and name eventually find the form(s) with which they are most comfortable.

Lacan tells us that the core of identity itself is a falsehood. We are really all the bits of us, but the image we think we are and the name that attaches to that image can only hold a few of those bits. Therefore that analog-I, in whatever form we try to present it to others, is not really "us"--it is just a picture and a word. Perhaps Lacan was right, we can never experience the Real--all those bits of identity that make up a human being. But that should not keep us from experimenting!

In the now

In the now, all the bits of what we think is us are assembled as if drawn from a puzzle box. We use what we have chosen for the situation within the bounds of the situation as we perceive it. But these bits, these fragments of our identity, encompased within the ideal imago that we want to be seen as us, have narratives attached to them. We only think we are a "something" continuous through time because of these narratives. As soon as the now passes, the narratives are augmented by what we think happened, what we think should have happened, and what we are told has happened.

Each situation we experience as a now is unique. We must use the tools at our disposal as they are needed, and find a way not to allow negative narratives to overwhelm our good intentions. To live in the now is to become unattached from the narratives and deal with each experience as it arises.

These thoughts arose out of an attempt to explain my actions to someone. In the past I have thought of these actions as a form of magick. Attempts to manipulate the environment of the now to gain the outcome we desire. For the most part this is not consciously done, because the nows pass so quickly, but it can be. Master manipulators are known to exist, and mass media only extends their power. A good book on the history of this art is http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Renaissance-Chicago-Original-Paperback/dp/0226123162

A virtual world, like Second Life, can help us sort out the various bits of what we are, by giving us a way to express them in real time interactions. Being aware of these bits of ourselves will help us to use them more effectively, though sometimes just acknowledging their existence can be a huge step forward. Sometimes fear will hold us back, fear of what others may think of us, fear of admitting to ourselves that we even contain some odd bits within us. But all that we find, all that is encompassed within that boundary we have set between us and the world, is truly us, and must somehow be integrated into the whole.

Pictures can also be useful. If you like a picture, ask yourself why, especially when it is a picture of a person. Do you desire the image, or identify with it? And if you identify with the image, then--why? Whom do you "see" as seeing the "you" in the image? Explore the idea of the interaction of the you as the image and the ideal viewer of the image. Images are useful in unlocking the narratives attached to the bits of ourselves we are looking for, but anything may trigger a memory. So let's go and explore the puzzle box! Accept the bad and build up the good, and be prepared to use what divinity and experience have given you to make your cosmos a better place for everyone.

Human Communication

Mallarme's works are difficult, but rewarding. Sometimes, through the barriers of death, isolated human souls, and the thickets of two languages, he speaks to me. At least I want to believe he does ^^;

The White Waterlily shows the ultimate failure of human communication. In the online world Second Life, I attend several discussion groups. After each meeting, I come away with the feeling that the words mean something different to each of us, based on our education, bias, and life experiences. How can we comprehend all that context in a few short sentences? The word God, for example, is often connected with the word Father. If you has a good father, or a terrible father, then that word drags in a whole set of concepts to enliven God. But what if you never knew your father? Then, that word would bring none of the meaning the communicator expects us to be hearing.

In Mallarme's prose poem, the rower sets out with specific goals, a search for water plants, to survey the property line, and to say hello to a friend. In his little boat the fragile self is carried along until a swamp halts his progress. In my mind, the swamp is all the clog of sensory data that is hurled at us day by day, compounded so very much since Mallarme's day. Then, he sees the "other"...he senses her presence, he imagines her thoughts...but he cannot ever know them. She makes no indication that she has even seen him. At last, he gives up and departs, taking one flower as a memory of the (non)-event.

In speaking to others, we use words that we hope will cut through the swamp and reach them intact and full of our intentions. But these words arrive naked, and are re-clothed by the hearer. So we must not only judge our own, posssible hidden, intentions, but guess at the mind of the hearer...what do they think we mean? In that moment, human communications fail, and we drift back downstream, clutching our version of the memory of what may have occurred.