Anybody

On paranoia and its trap door

We talk about self preservation like it’s the most noble thing or the ugliest thing. And that’s exactly right. It’s the most noble ugly thing. Sometimes you get the feeling that someone takes you for a fool; that they believe, in their heart of hearts, that they can sneak past you with ugliness, and that the two of you will never speak of it, you’ll just carry on according to the silent terms they’ve set. And how generous would you be if you did that for them. After all, they’ve done something plainly, boringly unbecoming, and to acknowledge it would be so sad. What if you pretended to not be capable of injury, to be the biggest and the strongest, and to not feel deep within your neck and your pelvis — these regions of the body which are portals and entryways — what they’ve snuck in.

And anyway, you could be wrong. They could be behaving acceptably if given context, with the best reasons for everything. It’s weird, though, they haven’t said anything about any of it, so it’s up to you to make up the story of their goodness and helplessness. This is why self preservation is such a popular subject. At a certain point, you are in such agony from being big and strong and generous in your imagination, if you are that kind of person, that you have to save your own life (in your imagination, but also maybe for real). And quickly, jarringly. You have to resuscitate whatever capacity may be left within you to love with abandon or else you will enter every subsequent relationship rigid and paranoid. So to keep the love in you alive you have to whisk yourself off, out of the room where the sad little acts keep occurring. And you can’t look back, and you can’t hold the hand of anyone left in that room.

Of course there’s the problem of position. What if it’s you who’s performing the sad little acts but you’ve got it in your head it’s them? What if you’re not resuscitating love but abandoning it? What if you’re already paranoid, and so you whisk yourself away from any possibility of satisfaction? (After a lot of research, I’ve concluded that most people need two things emotionally: a deep tissue massage for their frozen posterior chain and to be held tightly, without shame, in the arms of someone who loves them without conditions, for about 30 minutes to an hour. You can only pay for one of these things, so all the whisking away does catch up to you.)

This is what we’re doing so much of the time: Trying to figure out if the whisking is a life force or an extinguishing impulse. Is my self preservation noble or ugly, noble or ugly. Is the ugly in the room with us. Am I the ugly in the room. Is the nobility in the house tonight. Put your hands up if you’re noble or ugly. Anyone in the audience take me for a fool? Anybody?