post ii - Self War

Waging war on myself is something that I am familiar with, having been raised Catholic. At the same time, this has led my thought processes to function formulaically: sacrifice produces result; will creates possibility; following rules ensures safety and love.



I feel somehow that a background in Catholicism combined with postmodern appearance-oriented pressures, as well as a profoundly American confusion about sex, as well as a non-dormant animalistic instinct to cross swords with something have led me to suffer from anorexia nervosa on and off for the good part of six years. (Note, not since 2010).

Friedrich Nietzsche perhaps would have said that I, and scads of other women and girls (and anyone partaking in self-destructive behavior), were waging war on the self because we are a part of a species who until very recently evolutionarily, has been able to fight at will, as animals do. The fighting urge is still very much a part of our ontology, but this urge would get in the way of the mandatory structure of work and rules of society.



Fighting the self then, does not immediately put a block in this system, and it grows to be an acceptable fact that we can and do form varying cavalries aimed at our very own bodies and souls. Anorexia, alcoholism, even depression...this is a war on the self.
We feel an urge so strong to find refuge in the functionality of the system in place, that we'd sooner slit our thighs with razorblades than try to dismantle it.
Am I saying that these things are a choice? NO. I am saying that there is a boiling hot urge still within us that finds exposure, often without our permission, and that it sends its ranks to the front lines of our being.

Now I'm moving into Georges Bataille's territory...



So violence is repressed so that it does not interrupt the functionality of a system, and that repressed violence builds the steam that ultimately blows the lid off of the pot so to speak. This is when war is possible. When the steam is so forcefully building that organized war feels necessary, cathartic, dare I say....sexual?? A release?? See Erotism,



Fighting and sex. Hmm. Well fuck. This correlation is everywhere, but that's a whoooole nother can of gummy worms. Urges. Taboos. I don't think it's entirely an accident in our modern culture that the word "fuck" evokes thoughts of both sex and enmity. Personally, I litter that word into my diction like salt.



I'm going to say one more thing about the anorexia bit.... (don't hate me, I just really have to say it, now that I'm looking at it from an academic perspective). What a fabulous post modern disease! A real kick in the size 0 pants! Worshipping and wholly sacrificing the body, experiencing transcendence through starvation, and your culture doesn't even get mad at you until you're nearing death!.



And yet in the abuse of this particular disease is a worshipping of the body, all the more useful when one has ceased to worship the divine of one's upbringing. A formula, a sacrifice, a will, a promise of safety.

War. Restriction. Sex. Wow, I didn't even really talk about anorexia in relation to sex, nor the manifestation of other common modern disorders in relation to sex. Banging. Coitus. I have a different take on anorexia than just "the media." I think the media is an assistant crone to help in the diseases perpetuation, but at the core, I think it is something much more abysmal.

post i - true experience. Mini Wheats.

"I embarked on my life. I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation." - Don DeLillo

This is a totally tampered-with Macbook photo booth picture. It takes a lot of focus on the self to tinker with images of our own faces as we do. Self self self. I'd look better blue. Yeaaahhhh, blue.



The Macbook is the perfect postmodern toy. By even containing the word "book," it implies that we, as intelligent people, are entitled to own one. If it were called Macputer, or Mactoy, we would feel less studious entitlement surrounding our ownership of this fine slab of technology.



Fuck it. Have some sexually-charged art. Takashi Murakami. I had the joy of seeing this more than once in Los Angeles, but that's pretty fucking irrelevant.



Anyway, I'll get right into it. I'm a girl in many contexts, and a woman in others, living in what can still be defined as the Postmodern Era. I have had the often wonderful opportunity of being able to look at how I live through the many lenses academia has to offer, and I've got to admit...it is some fascinating shit. (Made even more fascinating due to the fact that I am self absorbed, as most of us are - don't lie. You are.)



This first post will be a mess. A fuck all. But I expect more organization later. With my frequent use of "fuck" and "shit," I am probably coming off as quite unpleasant; not to mention my open admission to being self-absorbed. Do I defend that now? Try telling you that self-absorption is in many ways default, healthy, and extremely extremely postmodern? What is healthy? What the fuck is postmodern? Does anyone really know? Lightbulb lightbulb lightbulb.

What I really want to talk about, initially, is who I am, and why it is that I often do not know who I am at my core, because this migraine-inducing-then-immediately-pacifying culture does not truly allow knowing exactly who and what you are without some kind of commercialized reference to serve as an anchor. I'm not even lamenting this...that I often don't know who I am. I relate everything back to information gathered elsewhere, and when majority of this information has been commercially fabricated, where does that leave me?

For example, the first time it snowed in Boise last year (pic taken outside of Joann's Crafts), I related the image of the snow immediately tooooo....



Frosted Mini Wheats, of course!!



Was I able to see the snow as just snow? Experience the snowiness for what it was? No. My mouth was literally watering thinking of perfectly-distributed sugar shit coating on miniature spools of wheat.
Snow? All of the sudden I didn't give a shit about the snow, and I wanted some Frosted Mini Wheats. Conditioning of commercialism has been a great success in my person! I should write to corporate execs and tell them that they are doing a fantastic job, succeeding in ways I couldn't have even imagined in disabling me from having thoughts that do not eventually shift back into General Mills' or Kelloggs territory!

Is this sarcasm? Not entirely. In some ways I am so amused by this type of self discovery that I can't even be upset about it. (Although, I have cried in a philosophy class before thinking about this kind of thing...but looking back on it, I may have been on my period.)

Here is Jackson Pollack deciding not to bullshit anyone.



Next post will focus on womanhood. Why we're all so mad and maddening. The war on the self, the war on the world, the war on sex. How we go into battle wearing MAC makeup and nylons, or alternately, we go into battle vegan and braless. Or all of the above.