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No Weaving, just Harnessing

You can't weave the wind, breeze, breathe, or mist!  That's the analogy that comes to mind as I tried to write weaving the lover, similarly to weaving the critic.  I can't grasp love, only harness it.  In my look into facades I reached frustration trying to describe myself as a lover.  It even has become irritating, silly, maybe exhausting to think so hard about all this crap.  I find myself even feeling ridiculous about sharing and romanticizing about this idea of lover.  I was rejected, jealous, and lonely when I started reflecting on behaviors, and these energies created what seems to be a somber and deflated spirit.  Since then another defense or maybe callous has developed.  The critic in me says sarcastically in my ear, "bueno Romeo and Juliet, wearing your poet pants, take off your underroos and grow a pair ".  It seems pitiful and pretentious, so I'm putting aside identifying a facade called lover.

I can't wrap my thoughts around a concrete or nicely organized lover concept.  I am waking up to reality, smelling the coffee.  I don't have a lover facade that I can conveniently label.  I'm partially stuck with realizing I have some boyish tendencies, often reflected as actions or attempts to be seen as a loving man.  Like if using a veil called lover will camouflage the insecurities of not knowing how to love.  Its sobering to know that I still can act like a boy who is tossed around and drug by the hair when times get chaotic, lonely, illusive, slippery, and desperate.  The last part of me that feels like a boy is the part of me that does not understand the power or utility of love, maybe only the value. 

There are two parts to understanding how love functions in me.  The first is the interpersonal and the second is the intrapersonal.  These two functioning love processing parts share uniquely several qualities, some are kindness, romance, dedication, commitment, and desire.  I do not have a lover, but I do love.  Love is an expression more than an identity, and it can be intrinsic or extrinsic.  I see love as being reciprocal, the most difficult of all loves.  Love is most importantly applied outwardly and inwardly by me.  Yet It is still uncontained.  No sense in ever trying to weave a concept of a lover.  I love saying this.  I love accepting that the part of me that loves and can be loved is unpredictable, versatile, and unknown.  

Love in me is found in so many ideals and shortcomings, and spans identities.  I am a passionate advocate inspired by an erotic servant.  Love flows in, through, and around my so called facades.  Love can move from selfless action to fantasy.  Love disappears and leaves me with an addicted self.  Love is the part of me that has been selective, stable, jealous, and scared.  When love hides in me it has left me vulnerable to being hurtful, nasty, careless, vulgar, and shameful.  Love helps me  endured, emote, long, wait, and grieve.  Love causes me to inspire, motivate, cherish, excite, and celebrate.  Love brings out the best expression of me, the healthiest me, and the most unknown part of me. 

I was not prepared for the idea that learning about love would bring so much perspective to my cynicism.  The released cynicism has opened my eyes to my narcissism.  Love has allowed me to fear in new ways.  Love is not a part of me, its a resource, like water, it flows through me.  I dont have a single part of me that uses love, probably explaining why I can't define a lover.  I have learned that every aspect of my being is effected by harnessing love or ignoring it.  My attitude has changed in ways that feel corrective because of recognizing and appreciating more of the qualities of love, the deeper and rich qualities, like patience, trust, and forgiveness.  

I see myself less fearful of failure and more fearful of being alone.  There is a cynic who is dying in me, and that space is making room for healthier narcissism.  I see healthy narcissism as a label for loving myself.  Please don't confuse this with vanity or conceit.  I am going beyond the stereotypes of self love.  I am opening myself up to the void created by the dissipating anger that was created in me over years of struggle and perceived defeats.

As I learn to care for me, I find myself more able to care for others. The better I understand my shadow qualities the better I am at forgiving others shortcomings.  I have been unprepared for how much self love could alter my understanding of the world.  I am on a "high love content" diet that will reduce my "high cynicism pressure".  I love myself, and now I am working to be congruent with how I treat you.  This is my way point.  I hope to see you along the way, it might not be graceful but I hope it is received with mercy.

Clarity

Facades are an abstraction and becoming a bit annoying to me.  I am getting to the point where they have become more like excuses.  I am finding myself boxing myself into what I describe as personalities.  I am limiting my experiences and reactions to this facade or that facade.  I have reached a point where over analyzing has set in like lactic soreness.  I have stifled my own creative interpersonal development by assigning facades from the Jungian framework.  I am rebelling from my own authority.

I am realizing that my individuality is being broken into communities, labeled as facades.  Like a Russian doll, I am ready to individuate even more.  I am not going to address my victimization and internalized defense mechanisms as a facade but more like a draw bridge I have drawn down or up as situations are perceived.  A true mechanism not a personality trait.

The beauty about having a brain is that it helps me distract myself from the realities that are wanting to teach me about the vastness within me.  The more I analyze, the more I realize I can spiral into complexity.  I also get spit out into the lukewarm waters of simplicity.  Sometimes making progress is as simple as willing to be taken advantage of, the openness to being incorrect, a vulnerability to be seen as gentle, or forgiving the hesitations that create regret.  Being a better man is not being a perfect man.  Perfection is complexity while appreciation might be simplicity.  Regardless I am a victim of my own perceptions, and my appreciation has been lacking.

Weaving the Critic

There are paradoxes in who I am.  In regards to my critic, I am willing to be confrontational in ways that are constructive and destructive, mostly both, but the results are perceived subjectively.  I have a knack for identifying paradox, maybe it is more modestly a knack for looking for paradox.  I have a desire to find hypocrisy, which is really paradox marked and misunderstood, especially within myself.

Hypocrisy seems to be a consequence of judgment. The blessing I find in hypocrisy seems to be the markers or indicators of paradox, analogous to finding run off patterns on Mars, here I can start searching for paradox.  When I come to find hypocrisy, it reveals my judgmental quality.  Life is fluid and cannot be narrowed into snapshots, leading me to believe that judging for the sake of socializing is toxic.  Judging for the sake of survival is necessary.  Judging for the sake of wellness is desirable.  When judging, I use snapshots or select moments to come to conclusions, versus having compassion for the complex fluidity of life. 

Their is foolishness in selecting, isolating, and highlighting particular blemished events.  Choosing motivates me to ignore the collection of life's memories that effect emotions and behaviors.  Each moment experienced has an investment in our future actions.  In judgement, it is hard to be both critical and compassionate because I need the dualistic objectivity to decipher a choice.  Hypocrisy and contradiction has been necessary to my growth.  I would not have been able to see the plank in my eye, without first recognizing the splinter in my neighbors.  The hypocrite in me has been a blessing in embracing my shadow.

So reflecting on how others judge me or give me feedback is helping me adjust my critical thoughts.  This helps me mark situations and circumstances that create judgmental patterns I can change.  These changes are helping me to connect and create bonds between what I see as hypocritical and my own contradictions.  This is where I dig, I turn over, and I probably over think, but I could do worse, I could be ignoring it. I am forgiving of what I cannot discover and appreciative of the beauty I am finding when most of the time I am expecting to see spoilage.  I am seeing that I am have become a better man.  I am seeing that I am doing the work.  In my search for broken pieces I am finding healing, fused, and stronger parts.  I am allowing my own judgmental quality to exist with less shame and better utility. 

I see how I cross boundaries when being judgmental. Boundaries are important indicators of congruence, like criticisms are indicators of hypocrisy.  My critic does not have a good sensor for recognizing boundaries nor the consequences that come with crossing them.  There is a benefit to my critic to cross boundaries that are oppressive or unjust, but I cannot to have this same attitude with all boundaries, especially those that people put up to protect themselves.  I also see how I am cataloging and collecting better understandings of boundaries.  This is helping with communicating my judgments. I want to learn to be judgmental in a cathartic way, hopefully eliminating the need to identify hypocrisy or contradiction in favor of tolerance and furthermore acceptance.

I can be momentarily contradictory and hypocritical. These moments are reasonably understandable using compassion, again holding them in the perspective that life is fluid.  I am not capable of being mistake free. 

I see being contradictory as a natural quality of being alive.  I am not capable of being constantly pure.  Accepting my imperfection has been revolutionary in my recent willingness to love self.  I never saw myself coming to point in life where I could be writing openly to the world that I am trying to discover how to love myself.  I would not have had the courage to trust that my uncles, cousins, and other men in my life would allow me this gentleness.  The contradiction of being gently strong has never been in my nature.  The idea of being a loving warrior, is a beautiful hypocrisy, most cherished contradiction.

I have striven for perfection and its been futile.  I have put perfection in the crosshairs only to find myself realizing I don't even know what perfection looks like.  When I am contradictory I am usually protecting myself, marking a point of vulnerability.  There is something shameful about being wrong.  There is something convenient about creating a contradiction to remedy being wrong.  I have fears that cause me to protect my delicate ego from being hurt by being wrong.  This is where power and control have come into play.  When I am wrong I feel a loss of power and control.  Acknowledging this is a release.  I find myself not knowing what to do now that I realize I need be comfortable with being incorrect or even corrected.  I find myself overwhelmed with fear of being wrong, a fear of inadequacy.

Carnal

I just ran into Jimmy Santiago Baca, a hero of mine just 20 minutes ago.  I ran out of the store chasing him down like the day I chased down Daryl Strawberry after drug rehab playing for the dukes.  I asked him if he was the writer.  And he said "yes carnal".  I have never felt so dignified in my cultural identity than in that moment.  I felt so empowered.  To what has seemed like slang my whole life in one moment became ratified as a legitimate phrase.  The word carnal has a temperament . It has always been how my uncles describe a homeboy, good friend, or brother-like figure.  I have shamefully reserved that word for rare occasions, tucked it away like q-vo,orale, and other fine declaratives.  Today he reminded me that the chains I've put on my Chicano language can be liberated, the gringo might even find it romantic.  As I grow into a man carnal is carnal, not evidence of delinquency.

Check for his interview on NPR Monday, I caught him on his way.

I want to be a writer, carnal!

Shine bright!

My Jay-boogs Front page of Kim Jew....just wrote about how beautiful this little guy is.

That beautiful little man is my NEPHEW!

Love....gone!

The romantic, the lover, I am waiting for you.  The more I reflect on this facade the more I see that this is my impasse.  I don't know who my true lover must be.  I don't know the boundaries around romance.  I think of love as infinite, but have experienced it with conditions and disappointment.  I am beginning to believe the lover in me is radical and revolutionary.  My romantic facade has been genuine and I will always be mindful of the my shadow's lust.  I am human and will always be vulnerable to the dysfunction of eros. I think about the restlessness my lover once had back in my 20's and how it chased affection and validation and compare it to now where I seek to connect and experience, and I see the exceptional progress.  I see how I handle the void of love withheld.  I can see how it is a form of control that has been used on me and by me.  I can see how my first thought is often more for concern with the other, when in my past the other was rarely considered.  I can see how much more meaning my apologies have because they are actually followed up with change.  My true lover has taught me that trust is love.  When someone says I trust you, it is the purest way to express their love.  My lover has shown me that love is not expressed in the sexual experience.  The ego has fooled me with the sensations and intoxicating rush of the orgasim into believing that love is felt like a high.  I have absolutely no clarity on how to love except in the form of forgiveness.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

- 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Love gone....into the shadows

My last post was the appreciation for the lover that I believe I am.  Now for the lover who I am trying to forgive.  I am a toxic person at times.  I have been described as manipulative.  I have been told I have a way with words that is seen as a way to talk my way around anything.  This is a quality of the romantic in me, the shadow side to my lover.  This is the part of me who I am stopping to look over this month, ironically designated for the lover...the valentine.

This toxic lover has been exposed.  I am a narcissistic person, not absolutely but partially.  I have spent most of my adult life setting goals that make me happy.  I had breakfast with close friend and in a conversation about being a lover, it was revealed and I found how I am manipulative.  I am manipulative and deceptive about my lustful desires.  I decorate myself in altruistic motives.  I convince myself that I am being attentive and caring.  I convince myself that I in this moment for the other.  The other being the person being loved.  There is a paradox in that yes I am an attentive and caring person, but I have minimized the narcissism and lust in the formula.  I have tried to justify my romantic qualities without acknowledging that in most cases I have had a motive.  I have deceived myself into thinking that I am serving my partner for their good, and ignoring that a part of it is serving my own desire.

The analogy that comes to mind is the where is Waldo book.  I feel like my self concept of my romantic quality is so distorted and biased with caring, sensitivity, and creativity that I cannot see Waldo.  Waldo being my narcissism and the busyness hiding Waldo is my altruistic romance.  I have a illusive insecurity to exploit love, to feed off of the vulnerability that I can create with the tools of caring, sensitivity, and creativity.  I had hid Waldo's toxicity in a collage of trusted yet manipulative scenes.  This is tragic and hard to own. I'm ashamed and scared.

As I criticize my romantic facade, I hope to remain kind to myself but real enough to induce change.  This is credited to those who have pulled away the veil that allowed me to enter into the defense of my romantic facade.  I recognize defense as an indicator of vulnerability. I looked for the insecurities that hide behind this deceitful and manipulative romantic facade.  I don't know how to process this realization, but I thank Greg a companion and source of wisdom for opening my eyes.  He revealed the importance for looking for Waldo in my pages of romantic collages.

There is a part of me, the romantic, that loves to hear what I want to hear, and I have learned how to achieve this in wicked ways, not absolutely but in part, I'd like to believe in a small part.  I am not forgetting that my goodness and golden side, true self,  outweigh and foreshadow my shadow.  I am publicly forgiving that I have motives that are driven by insecure understanding that vulnerability is a shortcut to intimacy.  I acknowledge that my insecure need to be desired has driven my romantic facade to exploit compassion and empathy to profit at the expense of another's trust.  I see that there is a sacred contract that must be signed and honored when dealing with vulnerability and I have violated this contract.  Please Lord forgive me!