i understand a little now.

at the bottom, there is a naked choice. you either let the wolves and buzzards in to feast on your dead flesh, or you claim a circle of space around yourself that you call your own, and you guard it with your life. the first choice is the abdication of choice; it is the default of doing nothing, and allowing the hate of the world (for there is indeed hate in the world, floating ubiquitously, breathed in unawares) to consume you. the second choice is the harder, and somehow is the more overlooked, and that is to decide for sacredness and love and hope.

we deflect or abstract this choice in many ways. at times we claim that we don't care about ourselves, but for others, we will do anything. but as the hatred around us grows subtle and persistent, we realize that this is a false distinction. you cannot leave yourself out of any interactions with the devil. you must face the devil as yourself, and speak your name first and foremost in the list of those whom you will protect as you stand against him. if you do not, then you have lost yourself to despair and the gnawing hatred, and soon afterwards, those you swore to protect will have to protect themselves from you.

***

there is a lot of irrational hatred in the world, and it attacks me persistently. its face is presented in figures outside of me, but i know that the most vicious attacks come from within. it would do no good for me to attack the figures outside of me, for 1) i would transform into the very monsters that are attacking me, and 2) again, the real enemy lies within myself. so instead, i have tried to practice something which is very hard for me: i have tried to learn how to love myself.

i don't know what your experience has been, but i learned early on to denigrate myself. as i may have mentioned in earlier blog postings, it is a form of "one-upmanship" against the world, because who could be better at putting myself down than myself? the irony is that it is a penchant for defeating oneself before anyone else can, with the end result being the same, i.e., that you have razed your own town in order to save it from being razed by bandits.

so i'm "good" at destroying myself.

it is therefore almost against my nature to build circles of "love" around myself. it is hard for me to even conceive of what that "love" would consist of, or to speak about it. i suppose that love for me is this feeling of simplicity and belonging, of appreciation and appreciating. it is woven together by breath and poetry and the art of the sacred, which is always (in my mind) the blind art, the art that can no longer see for the lack of distinctions. it is also tied to the feelings of love that are shared between myself and those i hold dear, strung up by pearl-like moments of unspoken unity that i have experienced with significant people... i dwell in these things, because they literally hold me together. if i do not actively cherish these things, then the world, this howling, hate-filled place, will literally tear me to pieces...

***

those who play the game of hate... let them play their game. i choose to do a different thing with my time, with my life. i choose to create my life in my own image, in the blindness of love.