6/5/07 1003 Wed
I seem to be involved in a long meditation about details. Listening to an account of the 6 Days War it sounds so clean: Israel swept into the Sinai and routed the Egyptian army; Israel moved forces into the West Bank and took East Jerusalem which had been under Jordanian occupation since 1948. I get this picture of a body, with cells in the middle just doing what they do, and then the cells on the outer boundaries that are involved with the interface with whatever is out there. I’ve been very content to be a cell on the inside—NOT at the cutting edge. The Israeli army was the cutting edge—where the battles were fought and the individual cells were dying and suffering. I also have been having thoughts about symbols, and metaphors, how on one hand they’re very real, but on another when taken to abstraction then they kind of disappear. For instance the segment on the ‘reunification’ of Jerusalem and how the Palestinians and Israelis have remain defacto separated. A dr interviewee said the only time she has contact with Palestinians is at work where she and Arab drs and other medical personel work closely together. “Outside the hospital”, she said, “We are separated”. I imagined the inconsistencies in that—picture them at the boundary of outside and inside—one step out the door: “We’re separated”, step back in “Look we’re together again” back and forth. At the level of boundary it becomes silly. Yet the abstraction of all the weight of resentments and suspicions is very real, once they leave those doors and carry themselves out into their city.
Another more personal example is what I was talking about yesterday just before stopping, about my sexual fantasy morphing into more of an intimacy fantasy. On the one hand we are talking about body parts. Yet if such a thing were possible (see—there’s an example too; on the one hand we’re talking about physical objects, and on the other there’s a sort of prohibition-charged atmosphere about it, where it would be very weird to bring something like this up) I think I could only embark if we’d shared a couple glasses of wine together or something.
It would be a unique thing. Not really a date, no part of a search for a mate, but an experiment to see what happens to two people if they talk at a detailed level about genitalia in general and our own in particular. What our environments did to shape our experience with these small parts of our bodies that are weighted with such significance. What has that weight of significance done to other people? Did they even feel it, were they taught it? Was there a weight of prohibition; were they objects to long for and lust after in and of themselves, or was it just part of a larger impulse toward sexual activity? I really would like to ask someone these things. I’d like to see what having these kind of talks would do to a friendship—would it make it tight?
I’m not feeling so well today. Kind of congested and achy, the skin above my lips and below my nose on fire from a topical treatment I’ve been using to get rid of some basal cell precancerous lesions. I didn’t realize that it would cause such discomfort. It’s very visible too, very red. If a little stray hair brushes across it it’s very uncomfortable. Scott keeps wanting to touch my face and that makes me a little crazy-irritated at him.
Later 1225
Feeling a little poor physically—that kind of dragged-down-low energy feeling, and perhaps a lowgrade fever. That might have been just because I’d just gotten out of the tub.
I’m feeling kind of mournful. A little sad about Scott and glad for him that he has the summer to be a bit more of a free spirit. I think this school year probably required more from him than it did other kindergardeners. I feel sad when I imagine being inside his little body, not really connected to what’s going on, yet wanting to please.
I finished the book. It’s true, that it’s not about finding happiness, but about what goes wrong when we’re on our search for it. In speaking of happiness we’re talking about making decisions that set the course for our futures. Ideally, our past experience helps guide us away from mistakes we’ve made before, and our imagination sets the goal. Whenever we’re making a choice we’re comparing how we feel now to how we’ll feel when we get it. How much value it will have to us. And our imaginations tell us that.
There are so many slippery details to try to get hold of: first of all, a definition of happiness—does it have to be future-based? A lot of this book seems concerned about our efforts for future happiness, and making the choices that steer us there. What about current, present-day happiness. That seems separate and independent of the kind of future happiness which seems to be about how you’ll feel in your setting, job, and companions. That seems ‘outside oriented’. I don’t think this book concerns itself with inner happiness as a background emotional structure.
That said, I can accept the premise of the book which is to demonstrate, with research supporting, that the things we think will make us happy don’t. This is through choices made that are distorted by the ‘limitations of the imagination’ (Realism, ‘the tendency to fill in and leave out details without our knowing’), presentism (projecting the present into the future and not seeing the details we’re missing, or assuming present emotions as a given in the future to fill in those details), and a failure to realize that ‘things will look different once they happen’ (rationalization). Since we are making our choices from such an unstable base (not able to see all the facts, projecting our current feelings into the future, not realizing that things may look different than we’re dreading once we get there, making comparisons based on mistaken thinking) we are bound to miss our target.
His solution is that when you want to do something, find someone who’s already done it or is doing it and observe their happiness level. That this is the best objective way of getting that information on which to base your choice.
Part of the book that I think might be influencing my mood right now is that it seems to strip my illusions of happiness and make them seem pretty mundane, and sort of doomed from the beginning. Here’s the hypothetical, and actually it has been making me feel ‘happy’, or elated: the possibility of an attraction between me and a young server at the coffee shop I go to. (I suppose there’s always a way I’m considering possibilities when I meet men independent of Gary and outside of our normal circle of friends). This on the basis of a certain attentiveness in the way he looked at me last time, an awkward exchange that had a ghost of entendre, and the fact that he’s a writer, and that he writes about people’s relationships. From this my mind fabricates an engaging friendship where we talk very intimately about a topic that is pretty universally uncomfortable. That we continue to like and appreciate each other, and the uniqueness of that kind of relationship—the mismatch in ages, but the purposes of this relationship very different from mate-seeking. A relationship for the sake of friendship’s intimacies, and a corresponding mutual pleasure exploration. Of course this looks really good: I imagine us in his place, and it’s simple but very comfortable with beautiful light. I imagine him being very comfortable in himself and solid in his liking for me, without weird constructs of shame causing ambiguity. In other words, he’s as warm and welcoming as he is now when I come in as he is when we are alone. Perhaps the discussion becomes mutually arousing and we explore sexual avenues. Perhaps it stays in the realm of warm friendship. Of course this is predicated on the theory that warm friendship and intimacy is the result of talking about sex on such a basic cutting-edge level. Talking about what actually happens to us, being unafraid to show it because it’s a project we’re working on together.
It’s a little embarrassing to write that down, but that’s the gist of it. I wonder how he’d feel knowing he was the object of that sort of fantasy.
And there’s no denying it brings me a sense of elation, pleasure at the thought of its possibility, the thought of trying the waters a little and seeing if they open up. I guess the delusion that if I’ve selected him than it’s because there’s already the possibility of something like this between us, and it’s likely to go somewhere.
Time to read back over the last week and record my dreams.
Dream for 6/5/07
I am asked to join some sort of elite magic school, or maybe I become eligible somehow & gain someone’s attention. (This is a magic school like Harry Potter kind of magic, not magician stuff.) When setting up at the school I’m met by a man, a little older than me. He shows me where my locker is. For a while, we both have our heads inside it, talking, & there’s a sense of warmth, attraction, curious intimacy that’s warm. Perhaps he’s driving & I follow him—it seems we’re in 2 cars—his very large & fancy SUV. He mentions it’s to carry all his kids. I ask how many he has, with the context of having that in common with him that I have kids. He doesn’t say specifically, but just says, “Lots. So many it’s like I’ve kidnapped them.” I tell him he’s lucky to have lots of kids.
It’s a setting sort of like orienting at a new job. Then it’s as if this isn’t something about magic school, but more about clandestine, like I’m CIA. But I’m on Willamette BLVD, the east end of it.
Something about how someone has bypassed or sabotaged something like an important source of fuel & I’m trying to find out as part of the job.
I have a mental image of the big sloughs—Bybee Lake, etc, in North Ptd.
Awakened by Connor coughing. At first not completely awake but finally resigned to having to get up & get him something for his cough so he can sleep. I’m getting up, wryly noting that Gary hasn’t initiated it (back to the always on nature of my job—and then he, Gary, says, “Are you getting him some medicine?’ Sigh. “Yes”. “And some water?” “YES” (duh)
It’s irritating that I’m doing the legwork, yet he then contributes to his own feeling of ‘contributing’—his illusion of contributing, by telling me how to do it. Pisses me off, since I know his memory will tell him that this ‘contribution’ made him an equal partner in parenting & I have no right to complain about his lack of support. He can probably count the number of times he’s been up with the boys on one hand.
Later—on waking
Going somewhere by air—Christmas. Spent a lot of time re-packaging a gift for Kaiden Kaden (funny, I wrote it that way on the card in the dream)—it was a gift someone else—maybe Scott hadn’t wanted & I realized it would sound to Joy like re-gifting, so spent a long time working it around to defeat that impression. Then realized on the way to the airport I’d forgotten it & was upset—no time to go get it. I was with a woman who seemed really disgusted with me, like that was just what she’d expect of me.
We go to a store before getting on a plane—in a hurry, but we’re offered a chance to go thru an aviary on the way out. Denise is with us. Part of it is we step up on a block & have our heads next to a bird. Denise was perfectly at home. Dave a little uncomfortable & trying to be funny about it, pulling his windbreaker over his head.
Oh, and then something real curious—something about Denise’s vision—having been doubled by “extreme anxiety”, & THEN that double vision sort of melding into just one, so it appeared she was cured, but it actually represents a worsening, even if the symptoms seem to improve
Last night’s dream:
Not much remaining in memory. Slept hard until waking. Something about a gulch of some kind, and walking on the bottom of it somewhere, and gaining altitude. With a group of people, can’t remember who. A man waiting for me at the end. Is it Jeff? If not, Jeff did appear earlier in the dream. A sense of working to accomplish a purpose together, though not quite the intimate feelings I’ve had with him in dreams before. It was more like that had to be set aside, or maybe doubt if it had been there? Maybe just missing it, behind the feeling of needing to get something done; perhaps wondering if it was still there for him. It seems there was some other dark-haired man in the dream too who was important.
