The Metaphysics of Vanessa

You say to yourself

Walk her to the parking lot after class

Talk about the New-Agey teacher

What we thought about

When he turned the lights off

And played a guided mediation tape

All quick questions

Defense Mechanisms

The barely-there norm

She’s this short, petite Latino girl

The speaker of a cautious, endearing language

Not the language of innocence

But of reserve and cheerfulness

Some knowing aspect

The cause of heritage

Of someone who hasn’t really strayed from life

Who doesn’t suspect there is a sour trick at play

Yet aware of this idea

Having felt its weight

Having persevered

Who may have been around the shady types

But does not advance it

A strange fact

In this strange thing

You say more liberalism would help

And a healthier economy

And we’d do well to spend time with family

Read a book every now and then

Stay in on Saturday night

And stare at yourself in the mirror

‘I know you’re after intensity’

You’ll say to the mirror

‘Cause I chased it too’

She says, We do it for ourselves

And then for others

Don’t confuse the order

For perhaps there is no way

But we shall not know coiled up

Sucking upon the second hand of centuries

The buildup of the easy

You say to her wonderful black hair

Remember:

We came out of the world

Without initiation

And the world came out of the world

Without initiation

I tell you this

But the hearers didn’t choose to hear

And the deaf did not choose otherwise

And you may withdrawal

Say you owe nothing

Say that you are your own thing

With your own projects

Your own pleasure

That no one can take that away

By her clothes

By her shyness

An honest young woman

You dwell on that

You

You are a liar

A politician

A teenage smirk

Glazed debris

You’ve sat against yourself

In the screaming body of a victim

Your body

So many years

Always digging yourself out

The body like a wet towel twisted dry

You first notice her on the bus

The back of her head

Her hair pulled back:

Over her ear the slimmest of strands

Out of order

In the wonderful sunlight

Blessing her

And you sit there

And you want to be surefooted and articulate

When you come into her view

You’ll exit and smile slightly

And you want to be the highest self

The highest there is

Self Love, Sea Lust

Been walking for sometime

don't know why I'm here

I no longer remember

Longings and hunger and thirst

have made their way with me

entangled, overgrown

this is what I know

I browse old photos

recordings

stars of the lid

I look at her eyes

how she was touching me

I look for clues

Oh, I'm a cog

a billiard ball

foaming

over and over

ripping, pleading

Will the next person

who comes down the path

save me

steer me away from here?

But down this path

is vacancy

is sea lust

a container

for the craving

of oceanic solace

of destination

In the mirror of ponds

I see tired eyes

blued eyes

foreign

in the cold of night

I hear chattering of teeth

startlingly near

But no one

there is no one

If you wonder why I walk

it's because I've already sat

hung my head

And sitting is much worse

you lose more than you know

spin yourself knots

dirt in every crevice

At least with walk

you dull the nerves

distract the eye

keep status quo

Again, again

I find myself here

in this forest

like yesterday

like the day before that

And on these days

shivers and shakes move through

I hear them come out of me

feel them as if emanating

from some wound

and the day follows night

even if night doesn't end

in your head

Yes, there's the typical resistance

to spilling myself

but I'm alone

would like at least one friend

even it is has to be me

Perhaps I will draw a map

if I cannot get myself out

to the sea

I will at least work

care for this path

removing obstacles from it's flow

cleaning it

with salt love

that burns

Am I a phoenix

from these ashes?

How many ponds does it take

to clean a man?

Will you tell me

friend?

Won't you tell me

Introduction to an ongoing project

Introduction: The Sting and Wisdom of Common Characterizations of Philosophy

            Over the course of the last few months I've been advised to visit with a number of specialists in the fields of dermatology and oncology to rule out a possible brush with a rare form of skin cancer.[1] Since I'm in my twenties the office visit small talk invariably revolves around whether I'm in school, what I'm studying, and so on. Having engaged in this type of ritual over and over within a short period of time, certain patterns begin taking shape when I've mentioned that I've just completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy. These patterns seem to me to be indicative of how the discipline-practice is commonly understood in a society, such as ours, which is crucially career oriented and pragmatic. Mixed with the prospect of death hanging in the air, something that never fails to sober things up, these patterns take on a bit more weight and bite.

            Apart from polite indifference and polite affirmation, one typical response is to imply that the study of philosophy is narrowly impractical for the workforce: "What do you plan on doing with that? Do you want to teach?" Another involves citing the reputation of academic philosophers for careful argumentation and reasoning to the point of irrelevant hair splitting, sophistry, or poor sportsmanship: "I sure don't want to get in an argument with you!" A final pattern  references the sheer intellectual complexity of the contemplative subject, perhaps signaling it's intoxication with and compulsive obsession in intellect: "Man, that's more difficult than med. school..." After running through some variation on these characterizations, the focus is then shifted to the explicit reason for the visit. When I walk away from such encounters, however, I feel the typical sting of being cut down to some extent, and this sting - when it becomes searching - acts to fuel my already present suspicions of a field which is so often, in John Dewey's phrase, a "self-indulgence for the few."[2]

            There is a kind of wisdom of the crowds that such characterizations flow from. In this case it's against, or at least suspicious of, the kind of technicalization and specialized projects which philosophers have taken on since perhaps they moved into the university and took their subject professionally serious. Candidacy for the sort of project I have in mind would be those which require a lot of back story to explain why anyone would undertake them and why they are worth the candle - and yet still seem hard to justify much effort. Perhaps an example would be the problem of Non-Being, sometimes called "Plato's Beard", in Ontology, which seeks to account for the type of being Non-Being has.[3]

            While this wisdom has much purchase there is a sense also that it is superficial - or at least not the whole story. Thus the sting. What I would like to consider here takes a stab at the whole story and lies at the source of the searching component of this sting. Another way to put this is that I would like to give weight to the best aspects of both sides of philosophy, the formal and the informal. I wish to honor both, as they both deserve our honor. Put in the form of a question my concern is, What is the value of philosophy and why should it be engaged in? My feeling is that taking an expansive step back and turning the philosophical gaze back upon itself will serve to give context to philosophy's disparate functions, some of which have gone largely unfulfilled in recent centuries, others of which have been misunderstood both by the layman and the professional. Perhaps too closing in on why philosophy is valuable will serve to keep our philosophical efforts properly motivated when they become stale, cloudy, and ostracized against - as they so often do.

            In any case, since responding to the question of value would be to utilize some vision of what philosophy is, and further, what it's functions are (for society, oneself, etc.), anyone taking on the value question must also take on these descriptive and functional aspects. It's in this way that the value question really breaks into a few parts. With this in mind, it will bear alluding to two stumbling blocks that tend to crop up naturally when talking about "philosophy" as such. These stumbling blocks may be referred to as the tunnel-vision tendency, which seems to arise out of philosophy's vastness and special seriousness, and the arrested-development objection, which seems to arise out of an anachronistic comparison between the "goods" of philosophy and the "goods" of science. After pointing these out I will be in a position to properly take up an analysis of what I think is a full response to the question of value - Bertrand Russell's response as in the last chapter of The Problems of Philosophy. My analysis will reveal that Russell posits three distinct values for philosophy: one springs from it's epistemic and speculative function, one from it's preservative function (of philosophical space), and the final springs from it's transformative potentiality. I will demonstrate that this threefold vision is meaningfully conversant with what I have referred to above as the formal and informal aspects of philosophy. Following insights from Richard Rorty, Richard Shusterman, and Alexander Nehamas, among others, I will show how these aspects refer to the "two basic forms" or poles of philosophy. Baldly, these poles, which can be seen as a spectrum, stretch from the critical-theoretical side of philosophy which tends to be formal and knowledge oriented, and the practical-transformative (or art-of-living) side of philosophy which tends to be less formal and oriented around producing flourishing or transformative insight for individuals and their communities. Final remarks will beef up Russell's account with some suggestions about philosophical lifestyle and the importance of non-intellectual educational mechanisms (which spring from the transformative function of philosophy), both of which Russell fails to say much about. Whereas Philip Kitcher has argued that a renewal of philosophy can be achieved by turning "philosophy inside out" - or by turning to it's fringe areas - I will argue that this renewal has much to do with re-balancing the two sides and bringing the art-of-living out from marginalization.

---

[1] Just for full disclosure: this brush with skin cancer has been reasonably ruled out as far as contemporary dermopathology is concerned.

[2] Kitcher, Philip, "Philosophy Inside Out"

[3] see Quine, W.V.O., "On What There is"

"They are a very strange people, the Hainish; older than any of us; infinitely generous. They are altruists. They are moved by a guilt we don't even understand, despite all our crimes. They are moved in all they do, I think, by the past, their endless past."

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (Perennial Classics, 2003), pp. 348. 

"I remember thinking, Oh great, it's four in the morning and I'm having some sort of weird mystical experience right in the kitchen of one of my best friends, merely by touching a woman I've never met before. This is not going to be easy to explain..."

Ken Wilbur, Grace and Grit (Shambhala, 2000), pp. 9.

"The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleaguered fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of the will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife."

Bertrand Russell, "The Value Of Philosophy", The Problems Of Philosophy (Oxford, 1997), pp. 158.

There Are No Angels (Dance In The Cracks - Part 2 of 3)

There's been this thought

tumbling around my head for a while

Perhaps a truism

It's that all good things

are the result of patience and care

That relationships

if they're to be worth a damn

ought to be no different

With this in mind

A worry entered

months ago

as I drove home

for the first time

from Cotati

I worried that the stages of infatuation
of surface

had not run their cycle

that patience and care

the bloom of sharing

and nearness

would not take

in this sand of long distance

so soon

this thing

so young

It was a worry tied to others

perhaps inevitable

perhaps circumstantial

The fact is that each of us hid ourselves

our motives

our hurts

I fragmented my anxieties

and loneliness

made them look mature

balanced

more then they really are

You suspended the rawness

of your past

and both of us

shaking

felt for the other

for warmth

for release

It happens that

We get what we sow

Yet even though I've never known

the raw de-centering

of heartache

until now

I'm still glad that things were put on pause

that it was felt necessary

to step back

halt the momentum

I'm glad because I was thinking similarly:

a step back was necessary

if our gentle thing

was to be worth a damn

if it was to get past the stages of infatuation

and enter into the depths of patience and care

if we were to even seriously talk

about what we wanted
if we were to look each other in the eye

To do this requires that we reveal those cracks

in the street

which we have fallen

to see the deep darks

It requires that we see one another

and ourselves

no longer as drugs

taken to forget our bodies

but as dying pining creatures

trying to create and maneuver

trying to face up

and sometimes flee

those hurts

that have crystallized into scar

that back us into corners

cut off the oxygen

prevent deep breaths

deep movement

that strand us in space

When we paused

and then when you stepped back

in your small orange notebook

allowing me to see you

from where you came

to what path you now peruse -

and how far I had gotten attached -

I was forced to sit with both revelations

and suspicions

things I saw off in the periphery

One suspicion:

I tended to use you

in a hazy way

as a distraction

yet deny

was a distraction

Often I saw you as sexual attraction

as playful spontaneity

I saw you as a respite for loneliness

a loneliness I've carried around

for years

I saw you as easing my anxiety

lack of confidence

philosophic crisis

post-college malaise

I saw you through the longing and hope for communion

Yet here you were

standing in front of me

naked

cold to numb

using me

for warmth

like I was using you

Oh, the distractions we'll sow

Yes

I know you are not without blind spots

and hang-ups and faults

There are no angels

in this world

Only longing

and trial and error

But I want you

I want you even though

the will to love

precedes the appearance

on the scene

of the beloved

I want you even though

the world gives no clues

as to what we should be up to

and we stand alone with what we take seriously

I want patience and care

to enter this picture

this story

I want to look directly into your eyes

for a couple sacred minutes

and longer

to not have you turn away

I want to be sacred with you

Did you know that?