Notes After the Storm

I felt the desire to write today, a compulsive need brought to me by what I have read today, but as I was going to sit and write, a storm broke the sky darkening it, lashing deafening lightnings and whipping the air with harsh rain and winds. I was taken by fear, but not some psychotic fear for the storm, for I do love them, but from power shortenings, power cuts that could harm Omi. I should really buy him a UPS. I feared each second that a thunder would hit close and the power would oscilate and flip something inside him, breaking him beyond repair. I had turned him on, and he was working slow, Internet getting caught on him, and I couldn't make my entry. My hand was firmly around the cable, ready to pull it out and save him if the light as much as flickered. I feared terribly for my baby.

Today I had to wait for the storm to wind down, so I could leave my impressions of the day.

My first action of the day was to read Anais Nin's journal, as I don't seem to have enough of it lately. There's not enough time to spend with it, reading about her life and the life of those in her life. I read more about her tormentous relationship with her father, and her turbulent thoughts on the matter. Open admission of incestuos thoughts and desires. She starts her visits to Dr. Otto Rank, a former disciple of Freud. His ideas, as she exposes them are somewhat misogynistic, denying the woman's possibility to be an artist. He says, according to her, that a cured neurotic man becomes an artist, while a cured neurotic woman becomes a woman. The man has invented the soul, so women have no acces to the soul. He throws in an array of "conforting prizes" such as women having acces to intuition, instinct and such, emotion and feelings, while men are rational. I hated that description. Dr. Rank continues saying that no woman can be an artist, or a good one, and those few who have (by 1933) managed to create something, they do it thinking and creating as men.

I sense a basic contradiction in the words Anais transcribes in her diary, or her "sketchbook": for once, Rank breaks with the psychoanalysts because he do not "label", and concentrate on the artist letting each individual create their own world, not trying to fit them into one general, social world, as Dr. Allendy did. He says that traditional psychoanalysis goes almost all about sex, but sex isn't all. Okay, I stress that and confront it with this thing about "women not being like men". We are of the same species, why would be be so different if it is not due to the traditional social roles imposed to us? There isn't a male way of thinking, or a female way of thinking, there's just "thinking" and that's different for every person, may that person be male or female or none of the above. Certainly, I have no idea what's like to be a man, for if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I do not remember the times I have been a man. I know my perspective, being born in this gender, but I do not feel being bound, being different than my male counterparts. Well, maybe only when I'm with my period and I wish all male motherfuckers to experience the same discomfort, but if I were a man, if I'd get my balls hit, I would certainly wish for all the female bitches to feel the same discomfort. Male of female, I'd always be the same and I'd think the same way. Socially, I might not express it the same way, but I don't see why would I think, act or feel differently. There are things that do not depend on a pussy or a dick-and-balls, and they are a lot, so why would they be different depending on the equipment you have between your legs?

What makes a man different from a woman? What would make their thinking different? You can't say that the man is a natural "provider" who from ancient times sought to protect the family and the turf, because women do that too. Look at all the single moms out there, or look at all the single women doing great. You can't say that women are softer and caring and the heart of the family, because there are single dads out there, and a lot of men care, even if they don't have a family on their own, they care for their pets or plants just as the traditional woman would. Ways of thinking? Yes, yes, I have said that men think within a digital frame with only two values to express all thoughts: sex and no-sex; while women use an "analogue" system with a wide arrange of values, all of which represent different feelings, which they use to express all thoughts. I do not deter from this, BUT this is a social programming. Men are brought up repressed from all values, forced into the digital system, while women, socially repressed from the "sex" value (they must be virgins, not whores), are pushed into the analogue system. But the thoughts, the core of thoughts are the same, aren't they? It's as if men were taught to speak French and women were taught to speak German. The language, the protocol is different, and it might not allow direct communication, BUT it doesn't mean that the things both of them express aren't the same, or similar.

It's the social protocol what takes us apart, but under this, we are all the same. If we could only stop thinking with our sex and use it for what it was intended, for fucking, life might be so much uncomplicated.

Another thing bothered me deeply. Rank also demanded Anais to stop writing her journal. What's wrong with this people? Is it that everybody thinks that what they can't see is all about them? Ugly stuff about them? I keep a journal ans I have taken to carry it around with me werever I go. I would feel at loss without it now. Leaving it at home, by my bed, would drive me insane with unease.Not because of the things written in it, fuck, it's all in Hungarian, but because what would I do if I want to record something at some moment and I don't have it with me? As it is, most of my entries I do when I'm not home. At lunch, at a seminar, while waiting for a meeting, during a power failure at the office, while waiting for something to download, for a printing to be done, waitign for someone, when I'm alone at the mall (which I actively seek)... what would I do if my journal were not there? What harm do these doctors see in the journal? Her journal might not be different from any other journal written by anyone else.

I think these doctors feared the secrecy of the journal. Some paranoid feeling might have taken over them, fearing to see themselves portrayed in those pages in a way different than the way they are. Thoughts are fine as long as they remain locked in people's heads and they don't speak them, but when they are out, and the image one have of other materializes and it is realistic and do not fit the image people have of themselves, they feel threatened. Might be a natural reaction, but are not people entitled to have their own vision of the world and their own vision of others? If someone who hates you thinks poorly of you, you retaliate by doing the same, but then again, that person hated you in your face and you expected the ill thoughts, but what happens when a friend, someone who has been nice to you thinks ill of you? Many consider that treason. Treason, I say? Why should anyone think only positive things of their friends and acquintances? People is human and they have their flaws you don't have to love. What if you recognize them and even point them out or down right hate them? Why should anyone accept someone fully? I hate stuff from my friends, and I vent about it in my journals. Why not say it into their face? Well, not all social bonds can take negative comments. That's why. Compromising because there's more good than bad in a relationship does not mean that you have to accept the good, or ignore itor bear with it. Be human. Hate it. Express it somehow . Express it to yourself.

In her journals, Anais also dos something really stupid: she lies to herself. What's the point of that? She lies when she tries to explain why she does this or that, why she reacts this way or the other, or when she tries to explain her feelings, and the actions of other people. There is a chance that she's lying because she knows others will read her journal --- sorry, diary --- but then again, she constantly insist on being honest only to the diary. Is it so? No, it is not. She gives excuses to her behavior and the behavior of others. She lies to others in order to "give them what they want", as if people wanted lies, but then, is she lying to herslef to give herself what she wants? Shouldn't people go for what they want, and if it si impossible, be informed of that so that they can readjust their goals or live with it? All deceptions are bound to evaporate. You can't hold up a lie forever. Truth do not exist, but the facts and the perceptions of facts people try to cover with fabrications and lies eventually surface. There's only so far a lie can stretch. Lies, like everything human are limited.