Will I not vote*, again? No!

Will I not vote*, again? No!
Torrey Orton
July 28, 2010

It's voting time again. Last time (11/2007) I did not vote. Should I not vote, again?

Early in the emergence of democracy, Kant (on 30th September, 1784) wondered "What is enlightenment?" In that short musing he arrived at one of the conditions for public unenlightenment, as follows:

"… The remarkable thing about this is that if the public, which was previously put under this yoke by the 

guardians, is suitably stirred up by some of the latter who are incapable of enlightenment, it may subsequently 

compel the guardians themselves to remain under the yoke. For it is very harmful to propagate prejudices, 

because they finally avenge themselves on the very people who first encouraged them (or whose predecessors

 did so)…."

He seems to claim that a public, in its unenlightened state being in the "yoke", might make its "guardians" keep it unenlightened, keep it in the darkness of prejudice and the unthinking behaviour which blinds it to the realities of its times. That is, keep us under the yoke of tradition, etc. It might also be enlightened guardians themselves, corrupted by hard times, who encourage their brethren to peddle prejudices as enlightening


To read the commentators (who are among our "guardians", supposedly) on the present Australian election campaign, it's hard not to think that we are seeing other guardians, the politicians and some of the commentariat, knowingly keeping the public in the dark by dealing only in "prejudices". Aside from my increasing certainty that our collective ignorance, abetted by our guardians commitment to yoking us in their intramural power struggles, is growing, little else with useful foundations is on offer.


The socio-political context remains much the same as 3 years ago, but with intensified challenges (climate, financial, socio-economic, etc., etc.) and reduced commitment of public authorities, especially the political, to engaging them. There is no discourse but the spun world, hence there is no politics. There is a charade, with tragic undertones.


There is a discourse about life style matters of the rich and famous, modelling the deepest values of our culture to ourselves… and so on. Only two things challenge my commitment to note voting again. The seat of Melbourne has been vacated by a very competent and relatively spin-free Labour pollie, a candidate for membership of the enlightened guardians Kant mentions, who maybe got tired of being dragged by his unenlightened mates backwards into the twilight. This departure increases the chance that a green MP can be elected for the first time, since his replacement has none of the broader public respect that he attracted. As well, Greens are 7ish % off a senate seat quota in Vic, too.


While my overall sense is that it won't make a difference in the grand scheme if they get a seat or not, the small scheme may offer a poke in the eyes of the defective majors. That's hard to pass up since I can't get close enough to poke them personally without committing a crime, or an uproar, at least!


So, I will vote again, if for no other reason than to offer a slight aspirational hand up to acquaintances and friends whose hopes are greater than mine in the here and now that we're in.

Aude sapere**



*In November 2007 I wrote an article published in the now defunct New Matilda titled "I will not vote" arguing that voting in the Australian federal election was an undesirable collusion with the appearances of democratic process in undemocratic conditions. It was not warmly received, even by close acquaintances who were, and still are, more hopeful than I about the conditions for democracy here.


** 'dare to know,' 'have the courage, the audacity, to know.' Foucault, 1984 discussing Kant's challenge to those seeking enlightenment.

Learning to act right (14)… Trusting Judgement

Learning to act right (14)… Trusting Judgement


Torrey Orton
July 21, 2010


Collecting individuals' learning stories is a constant source of wonder. This is not the exception. Rather it is almost a model. It would be a model but for the fact these wondrous works are always models of individual perspicacity and so what is modelled is the effort rather than the form of an action. It is a model perhaps of some problems of our times, seen through the eyes of a youthful participant in them.

 

Trusting Judgement

by Troy

Let me begin with a story…

Here's a situation: you're out fishing in a speed boat. Your line trails in the wake as the boat speeds along. All of a sudden it gives a mighty tug. You are pulled in to the deep water. The boat continues to speed on. As you flail around under water you see that you have hooked something big, but your eyes are blurry in the water, you're not sure whether it's a dolphin or a shark. You're scared. Either way, you're always hearing that more people die from bee stings than shark attacks, surely you will be fine. You come to the surface spluttering and see the fin break the surface, yet you still cannot tell what it is. The creature gives no indication that it is dangerous. In fact it's playful, you see its shadow swimming around under you, doing loop the loops and all sorts of tricks. Underwater you feel it brush against you; there are scars on its skin. This scares you; however it still seems to be just swimming around, friendly… You start having lots of fun playing. Yet every time you feel those scars, your stomach drops. The boat returns and is bobbing nearby- you have the means to immediately extract yourself from the water… And now you have a dilemma. You're scared, but it seems fun. Can something with so many scars be safe? Your friends and family in the boat don't understand your fear; they can't see the scars and your descriptions can't quite capture what you feel as the creature brushes against you. Some are jealous and marvel at how lucky you are, and you feel guilty that you cannot fully appreciate it. The fear makes you tired. You start to worry that you will just drown…

This is a discussion on judgement. The above situation represents my experiences of being thrown straight in the deep end of the relationship game and provides an emotional context for my discussion…


We live in a postmodern society where relativism is highly prized for its ability to give one the freedom and excuse to do whatever one wants, providing you are not directly, or presently hurting anyone. The apparently archaic saying "Judge not lest ye be judged" has been embraced in wider and wider circumstances. People just shrug and say "Whatever floats your boat…" Morals are considered archaic, which is probably fair enough given their destructive use in the past to isolate, persecute and denigrate individuals.


Partner: "How many would you expect?"
Myself: "Well, I'd expect you to be able to count them on your hands…?"


A discussion with my then-partner about his sexual history yielded to me a surprising, and unsettling result- an apparently lengthy history of casual sexual encounters with a high number of different individuals (I say 'apparently' because only after the breakdown of the relationship, months down the track, would I be informed that he was insecure about a lack of sexual encounters and thought to up the number, despite my virginal status. So for all intents and purposes this was the number.) I was unsettled, even repulsed. Yet I was not sure whether I had the right to be:


Friend: "So he didn't actually do anything to you? So what's the problem?"


Good question. What does one do when you make an intuitive value judgement against the behaviour of another? Or, more specifically, the past behaviour of another? Is one allowed to act on it?


Society has tried to condition me to espouse the extreme, almost childish view of freedom- the ability to satiate the id within us. Yet somehow I managed to acquire a different ideal through my family upbringing. This one has a greater awareness of people as family, community, social beings, rather than as George Bernard Shaw says; "feverish, selfish little clot[s] of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." There is a value structure in my upbringing that upholds respect and care of others as well as the self. Somewhere along the way this value structure began to much more resemble a moral stance. Behaviours that I considered self-destructive or disrespectful became 'wrong.' Engaging in numerous random sexual encounters fell in to this category. This left me floundering. I was already in the water, I'd been having fun, and I was committed. Yet I was confused at my feelings of revulsion. He hadn't done anything to me. It was all 'before my time.' Yet I couldn't shake it.


We discussed it. Over and over. For months. Discussions where we tried to gain an understanding of each other's feelings and positions. Circular discussions, often escalating to tears as we realised we were getting nowhere. Over and over. Tears escalated to convulsions of panic on my behalf. Fear cut at me, as real and as physical as a knife in my gut. The days turned gloomy. All the amazing trips, parties and nights out could never quite distract from the darkness lingering in the back of my head - a darkness that just seemed to take a life of its own, make the future hopeless.
This is the nature of depression. I was not able to recognise it at the time. I knew little about it. But after I got treatment and started psychotherapy, I gained an empowerment. I ended the relationship, a decision that was very difficult at the time, because I still didn't trust my judgement. The action was, however, validated by a confession of deceit by him the day after.


It became immediately apparent to me, the difference in my hope for the future. It really was like the sun had come out. I had a new honours course starting that I could be passionate about. Putting effort into self care, like cooking great food or having a bath with candles and quiet music, these kinds of things assumed an inherent value to me that lifted my esteem. I surrounded myself with friendly people and learnt to be thrilled with life.


Here is what I have learnt. We all make judgements. They are intuitive. They are evolutionarily required for the survival of the species. If a man runs at you in the street with a knife, you need to make the judgement that you are probably not safe, and should flee. Judgement is intrinsic, so we must recognise and listen to it. To not listen can have very damaging consequences. I hope this doesn't come across as me advocating the discrimination of people who have different values to our own. It's about self care and recognition. Likewise people also need to take responsibility for their actions and realise that a consequence of them may be that they will be judged by another in the future.

Learning to act right (12)… Choosing to end a marriage

Learning to act right (12)… Choosing to end a marriage
Torrey Orton
July 14, 2010


Here's another tale of growth occurring, as it often does, on the back of division and depression. This one emerges from an explicit conflict between two publically accepted versions of right behaviour in the mind and heart of a friend charged with modelling right behaviour for others. David presents this conflict in clear and unflinching terms. More importantly, he's unblinking in assessing his own struggle to do the right thing. Like many such struggles, his tale bears tinges of the unresolved or the uncompleted aspects of the conflict. Doing it can never be fully over it, perhaps.

Choosing to end a marriage

In the late 70s I found myself struggling to deal with my marriage which was at a terminal stage. The major struggle involved dealing with two ethical considerations which were in conflict.


I was a Baptist minister working as an independent Christian education consultant, which meant that I was not engaged in pastoral care of a congregation but I was a member of a local church where I and my family worshiped.


I was part of a tradition and culture that expected any minister to set an example to others of upright Christian living and this was reinforced by my mother, a very strict, conservative practicing Christian. This meant that a minister's marriage had to be sound and above reproach – or at least to appear to be so no matter what the reality might be. This expectation weighed heavily on me to such an extent that I took far too long to acknowledge that the marriage was anything but sound.


While working with a church in the USA (in the early 70s) I was exposed to a different tradition and culture, one that took a different view of what it meant to be an example. This culture perceived that the important thing about setting an example was to be open and honest about personal failings and about the struggle to live up to the expectations of what 'being a Christian' meant. I was attracted by this perspective yet I did not find it easy to take on board as part of my ethical framework.


When the marriage eventually got to the point of crumbling I found these two ethical considerations were creating an internal dilemma as I faced the question of what action I was going to take.


I found myself having to make a choice about whether to leave the marriage or not. When I reached a point where I felt that a decision had to be made I struggled to find the willpower (courage?) to actually do it and looked for help from external sources. The following extract from my journal at the time describes the experience:

An advert in the Saturday paper for a furnished country cottage caught my attention but did not produce any action. Sunday morning's sermon not only had a strong note of "Be strong and trust me to meet all your needs" but was illustrated by a story of a woman who separated from her husband by taking a country cottage!!! My response was not to do anything till Monday, taking the risk that it would still be available. Before phoning I had a time of prayer and Bible reading from Psalm 144 "You......rescue your servant David. He is my protector and defender, my shelter and saviour, in whom I trust for safety." With this reassurance I rang the landlady, arranged to view the cottage and then took up the rental.

Although that helped me to finally make the choice to leave the marriage it did not create a situation of subsequent clarity. My journal reflects an ongoing struggle for almost a year before I was finally content that I had made the right choice and was able to adjust to a new way of life.


Looking back some 30 years later I can still recall the pain of the struggle to resolve the ethical considerations described above and am fascinated that I could not earlier find the strength within myself to implement the choice I eventually made. Perhaps this is an indication of the deep-seated indoctrination that occurs within the conservative Christian tradition and the consequent struggle that is experienced by anyone wanting to find freedom from it.


David J Scott - 280610

Being here (4) …. Being responsible…

Being here (4) …. Being responsible…
Torrey Orton
July 12, 2010

Being responsible and taking responsibility for…

My friend Hamid likes being and I am moved by the care he gives to his being…steadily pursuing its latest manifestation(s) in shaping his future (and mine to the extent that my doing and his overlap). I was engaged with my being early one recent morn – a time when I am most able to contemplate uninterruptedly. My topic was responsibility. I was musing upon it, pondering* it…my responsibility, or lack of it, in a recent event.


I became aware that taking responsibility and being responsible are different moments in the process of responsibility. Being responsible - that is, having a source of responsibility in me - is the pre-condition for taking responsibility and consequently acting responsibly. To act responsibly I have to already, all the time, have the need and intention to be responsible quietly present to me. In this sense, my being responsible is the origin or source (here the noun matters as the verb did above) of my doing things responsibly (or trying to!).


And here we can segue into ethics – both learning and acting – gliding on the back of character or foundational values, without which we cannot take action, ethical or otherwise. Being responsible is one of these values. Taking responsibility for specific actions is the public expression of character.


Actively denying responsibility for something, especially if not explicitly having been asked to take responsibility for it, is a backhanded acknowledgement of a self-perception of having actual or possible responsibility for it – guilt by defensiveness?. You can see this at work in public sex scandals when the implicated (eg. footy team managements and the users of their public faces for profit – advertisers, would be celebs, etc.) protest the innocence or mitigate the undenied behaviour of the accused. Or, see the recent David Jones CEO resignation for a higher class of the same predicament for corporate boards.


Back to being…
So, when we are working with people about being, we might entice them into experiencing their own values and virtues. Enticements might be invitations to tell stories about challenging events in their lives of which they, or which others who they value, are proud or ashamed. Both 'good' and 'bad' experiences (hence pride and shame as markers) can be sources of value finding because they are heavily loaded with various feelings and so self-traceable along the tracks of one's history. Values have to be enticed into view often because they reside in the foundations of our being and are shy of the light of day. Values and virtues tend to be a bit self-abnegating or they can easily turn into vices (pride, hubris, arrogance…).


In the process of seeking and bringing virtues and values to light we implicitly disclose the structures of being, perhaps. For instance, when acting responsibly we are in tune with ourselves and experience our intentions as emerging smoothly from the circumstances requiring them - a kind of mild flow experience.


Depleted replicas?
We learn to be responsible by doing and being with others – the active processes of social role modelling. Learning responsibility, among others, takes years, the sort of learning only an upbringing can provide. Hence, it takes a village to raise a child. It is possible in our times, freer of villages than ever, that those aspects of being inhabited by virtues and values will be thinly populated by depleted models. A google of their spiritual entrails may reveal bloodless, because unblooded, replicas of our historical values and virtues.

Being on the edge of nothingness??


*it's hard to know the right verb here, not because the action is evanescent (pondering is just a bulky musing) but because the subject assumes a different materiality with the action expressed in it! Responsibility is as often engaging for its presence as its absence, in which case the feeling is heavy and its trigger the sadness of disappointed, though justifiable, expectations of self or others.

Appreciation (26) … Pan’s Labyrinth , revisited

Appreciation (26) … Pan's Labyrinth , revisited*
Torrey Orton
June 28, 2010

The last bits from my trip notepad have peered out at me longingly for two weeks. I couldn't really get any energy from their reference to two museum visits, one in Bilbao Museo de Bellas Artes) and the other in Barcelona (Museo Nacional D'art de Cataluña). As often, such notes are the surface evidence of an underlying wonder – in this case about Spain and the Spanish, a defined geography containing contesting populations, as it has for centuries. My wonder was something about how the Spanish came to be as they are, another confused European entity gathered together under one banner with regional populations struggling to reclaim historical identities and right historical wrongs. I was particularly interested in the forms violence takes culturally. Each museum had a very good exemplar couched in their regional histories.


This is a long history and too much to learn well enough to penetrate it with intellectual confidence. The Basque struggle is one of these, noisily in our awareness, while the Catalan is another, less prominent outside its region but ever present within it, paralleling the Basques' commitment to retention of original language. The Basque country is on the borderlands of the both the aboriginal peoples of that area and later the boundary between Christian Europe and the Moslem occupation to the south.


I realised only after allowing the two violences out of my notes that Pan's Labyrinth captures that history to some degree. The two museums carried powerful emblems of it: a history of bull sculpture and bull fighting art in Bilbao, and a history of Catholic Church art of the Catalan region from the 12^th to 14^th centuries in the Barcelona area. The shared theme is violence, one in the name of human dominance and the other in the name of God's.


The inevitable…
First the bulls. Their images predate modernity by millennia. But, what was stunning for me were the 18^th and 19^th century paintings and drawings in which the bulls often seemed to be winning. In a couple of sequences various humans and horses were torn up and in a final frame the bull was standing looking defiantly at the remaining attackers. Of course there were others showing what eventually happens to bullish defiance, but the amount of others' innards shed on the way to the inevitable was clearly substantial and explicit. Not surprisingly one of the sequences was by Goya .** The inevitable continues to this day.


Christian violences
Second, the Christian message to worshippers. Across the mountains an hour by air from Bilbao and two days later, Barcelona's grandiose Museo Nacional D'art de Cataluña hosted a Gothic religious art display mainly composed of items from the regional churches of that era. The earliest of these pieces in the show (some four or five galleries worth out of the total of 15 or so) were characterised by more explicit scarifications of saintly flesh than I had seen for a while. These were not of Goya's representational competence, but the facts were clear; roastings and toastings with solders piking the future saints around on the grills; beheadings, hangings, lashings, and intricate combinations of these, often as the backdrops to altars.


The scarification theme slowed down over a century or so, to the point that kids arriving in their parents' churches around the 14^th century would see next to none such imagery. More your variations on the politer end of the biblical stories, with occasional implications of pain and tribulation. Holy families, visitors and ascended believers.


Organisational violence encourages the personal?
Shortly (1460's), the Spanish Inquisition came along to drive a new expression of God's violence with the added energy of royal sponsorship and partial funding (see PPPs below), which lasted actively until 1834! Not until I just looked up the Inquisition did I realise how both penetrating and persistent it had been. A love for public, terminal violences characterised both the church and the sports of their day, with the sport remaining to our day both in its lands of origin and exported to the Hispanic world. Its time may be going. Major public spectacle status of bullfights did not fully emerge til the 18th century, towards the end of the Inquisition's hold. Religious spectacle begets sporting spectacles, a link shared by the certainty of death in both? Religious violence pits organisation against individuals (carrying the burden of opposing organisations - Islam, Judaism and Christian protestants and heretics). Corrida de toros pits individuals against powerless but dangerous adversaries. Overpowering is the main theme, with black and white justifications the energisers.



 
And so, I wonder what it was like to live knowing that what you believe can bring you death by a thousand cuts, if it is known; and wonder how many refused to take the apparently easy way out (recanting, converting), and finally, wonder what it was like to be among the converted of all kinds – protestant, Jewish and Moslem - (13,000 Jewish conversos in the first 12 years) who were rigorously examined by the Spanish Inquisition. Just a little test of their faith, supported by a small army of local informers (who may, as always, have had other agendas than theological purity). After reading an early draft of this post, Charles recalled having been to an exhibition a few years ago in San Diego (Calif.) of instruments of inquisitorial torture, a visit he recalled with visible and audible horror.


Whateva, as we say these days, but that's hard times. Yet, the numbers shrink to relative peanuts in the scales of modern atrocity, and contemporary methods (Cambodia's "killing fields" come to mind) have little to learn from those of the pre-moderns. You can have it all on the web these days. But, it's not quite as clear about the look of the damages as were our precursors who, like Chinese road accident reduction campaigns in the early (1990's), posted explicit gore in unavoidable public places. I approve.


Finally, finally, this excursion reminds me how ordinary is the atrocious, permeated with its banal little vengeances and materialisms. If you want an argument against self-funding (for profit) public services, a trip to the Inquisition is instructive and easier to get the facts than our PPPs.



"Happy trails to you, until we meet again…."


*run through the first 20 posts to the Pomeranz / Stratton review for a glimpse of the range of takes on this film.


**I am aware that Goya is a major figure in my personal art history catalogue. This was because I was exposed to his realist treatments of Spanish civilians terrorised by an earlier group of foreigners in the Peninsular Campaign of the Napoleonic Wars. When we were in Basque country, we spent time in Gernika and its Peace Museum which memorialises the 1937 bombing by German and Italian airforces. For some reason an album of Goya (Disasters of War) was in my family home in the 1950s. I imagine that it was through Goya in my later primary / early secondary years that I first encountered undisguised human butchery. In the 50's that aspect the Korean war was not in TV (MASH never got there either 15 years later), and visuals of the WW2 European and Pacific calumnies were not in everyday print or film, though the first book length coverage of the extermination and concentration camps was around by the late '50's I think. An American history of a Civil War Confederate concentration camp was published as the novel Andersonville (1955) which notably did not treat the northern camps of the same sort.

Learning to act right (11)… No molestar

Learning to act right (11)… No molestar
Torrey Orton
June 23, 2010

No Molestar

(= Do Not Disturb - Spanish sign for hotel room doors)

In the borderlands

This is not a hotel story, yet the false friend offered by the sign is topical. It's an ethical decision making story which involves a failed defence with no negative after effects, except being reminded how threatened I can be by implicit violence. Why does this matter? What's the point, as Charles asked about an early draft?


The point has to do with situations in which the point is not at all clear but seems demanding to be clarified in an unavoidable way. There are life circumstances where correct perception of danger is the most important thing to have. Without the perception, correct action cannot be taken, or is likely to be compromised by the delay to ponder the facts. Trouble is, we can't always or reliably tell what's dangerous and what not in the facts. The following example is one of such. Our times are riven with them. These are the borderlands.


They are also relativity heaven, where judging the intent of others does not easily resolve itself into objectivity. Hence the detail in what follows! Its objectivity was hard to bring clearly into view. The flush of demanding factors in the process was almost overwhelming – in fact, to some extent I can now see that the whole event can be interpreted as an attempt not to fall into overwhelm …into that state where no action is as likely to arise as some action, right or not!! That's sometimes a very bad thing.


Wandering down The Ramblas in Barcelona at any time of day may be a challenging task moderated by the endless varieties of humanity surging around, even in the rain, as that day. A known but unidentifiable danger lurks thereon – the local pickpockets. I know they are there and carry my wallet in my left front pocket, my gold pen out of sight and camera in a backpack.


History

I once was the subject of a similar attempt in the Paris Metro about 8 years ago, with a similar outcome to this story, but much less explicit confrontation. So, there was nil subsequent hyper-vigilance or feeling of powerlessness. In the streets of Melbourne a related incident occurred four years ago across from the Telstra offices and just down the street from the site of "Doing little goods badly" a month ago. This was a case of beggar thuggery, or thug beggary as it turned out. A handout seeking hand protruded from a well-coated and trim bearded guy who said, "Why don't you look at me when I speak to you?" and followed up with, "Next time I see you maybe I'll take your wallet off you" (confirming the implicit threat of his initial question). That one populated a terror spot in me for a few weeks. Charles also pointed out that the underlying personal dynamic of this post and the one linked above is similar!


What follows is subject to all the distortion factors you can imagine, but, as elsewhere, it's the only evidence I've got*. The whole incident took 20 or 30 seconds I guess. It had been raining on and off that morning (we'd just gotten in from Bilbao), so I was carrying a tightly closed folding umbrella in my right hand by its crooked handle. My left hand was free and I had a small, lightweight, but heavy-duty backpack on.


First approach

At about this spot a guy around 30 drew along from behind my right shoulder waving a menu sheet about two feet in front of my face. Jane and I had been walking along for about 15 minutes by that time. We had just finished a very pleasant seafood lunch at the Boqueria Mercato with power assist from a bottle of rosé. He asked if we wanted to try something at one of the Ramblas restaurants. I walked on, maybe saying 'no', maybe just dismissing him with disregard, or some of both.

Upping the ante

He continued with the sheet and drew closer, touching my right shoulder with his left and starting to talk about learning the tango. The tango talk was punctuated by swings of his left foot across my right as we walked, each time trying to get further around my foot with a swing recognisably tangoesque if you've seen enough movies. It was certainly the first time I'd felt the fine fit of the swung foot to the other's steps, and the potential for a misstep to be a trip.


About the third swing I was feeling invaded! I can't pick what switched my attention from patientputtingup to impatient suspicion and irritation. I stopped and turned with the rolled umbrella in a useful though not threatening position, unless you know that a stab is better than a whack for defence. Almost at the same time, I was aware that his hand was on my right rear pocket (which had nothing but a handkerchief in it) and I faced him saying "get your hand out of my pocket." He denied having it there and threw an offended / angry look along with the denial, but also started backing off, and by the time I was fully turned he was jogging slightly away. He was about 180 cm, medium build, shortish black hair and cold eyed. I cannot reliably recall the guy's face, though I have a sense of classically attractive Spanish male.


Recovery?

We continued along the same path to the end of the Ramblas at the start of the harbour, paused for a few moments reflecting on the event, and decided to go back the way we came. I was in mild shock…a slight sense of damage with steady apprehension that he would reappear and there was nothing I could do but be vigilant; hence, hyper-vigilance set in and lasted for an hour or so.


My state of vigilance had been reasonably high all the time we were in the street, but not high enough to pick a set up in the making. I didn't react immediately to his invasion of my visual space with the menu sheet. Why not?


Two reasons come to mind. One, I didn't assume he was anything other than a restaurant spruiker (though that is not a common practice on The Ramblas), and two, I'm a small town kid with an innate first assumption face-to-face of benign intent in others (the underlying vigilance came from the published fact of pickpocket presence there). Of course there's the rosé effect, too. So, I didn't push him away, turn to face him or do other distancing things because they would have broken the first assumption. Even when he crowded my visual and then physical space, the first rule continued in force.


About now you might be noticing that this rule suite is also a rationale for an intrinsic passivity, or a conflict avoidant attitude. This is an underlying factor for me, but if it were not I'd still face an ethical dilemma something like this. His activities could all be explained, and so deflected, by a story about his spruiking role: need for employment, presently stressed financial straits and sick child….etc. And this would contextualise his invading my space from his viewpoint, and partly mine, too. I unconsciously provided that story, just as I have fabricated it now here. It's the story of a recognisable life role of low threat, but some invasiveness.


Perceived invasion

But, to explore the perceived invasion would have deepened a relationship I did not want to have at that time. It was not a casual encounter of the daily sort (a light acknowledgment of others in passing transactions – buying newspapers, croissants, coffee; or, managing passage in crowded streets: who goes first at the lights, which side of the pathway to tend towards, etc.) which arise and flow away briskly with a slight lift in general interest and affect, but no continuing commitment. Spruiking implies a potential commitment which is about to be negotiated. I did not even want that amount of engagement.


He knew, and I do too, that an initial response to another can be modified by expression of real intent. So, good spruikers are good at persisting up to the point of irritation, of explicit rejection. And, we both know that as a generalised social expectation. This makes both of us responsible for maintaining the appropriate distance…but, that but again, the responsibility is not symmetrical. The spruiker has more responsibility than I do (than one has!), and here comes the potential conflict.


To question a spruiker's expression of his/her intent is to implicitly question their conduct, to challenge it and potentially to reject it. The likelihood of an inquiry becoming a challenge increases when both parties are under pressure. For me this prospect reduces my capacity to defend against the unwanted, while not reducing the perceived invasion. An eventual query then tends to be over-expressed as the unexpressed offense gathers energy under my repression.


No refuge..

The underlying dynamic crosses many kinds of public (and presumably private) relationships, sharing the platform of perceived powerlessness, which can be as strong with the destitute (beggars, needy, homeless, temporarily down) as with the destroyers (thugs of various sorts). The ethical challenge is to act out of powerlessness usefully. Understanding my powerlessness is a starting place. The epistemological challenge is to understand something both ephemeral and terrifying – my powerlessness. There is no refuge from being disturbed by life.


*In fact, there were two guys in the restaurant pictured who I noticed noticing the latter stages of this brief incident. Of course, my noticing them noticing is also suspect... and so it goes. I think they were still seated there when we walked back along the same path five minutes later.

Being here (3) …. Being there, and not

Being here (3) …. Being there, and not
Torrey Orton
June 22, 2010

"Being interested in others' interests…"

I was asked (in that 'you must have been...' way that people often do) by a waitress in my local coffee shop if I was excited about being on vacation in France. I actually couldn't reply for a bit and stumbled around for a few more bits until the barista piped up from his lunch a few tables away to volunteer that I probably wasn't excited about something I'd done often. But, I was stumbling for another reason – something I still can't access or express clearly.


The experience I had just had was of being there on vacation pretty constantly. I wasn't irritated about being there, about not being elsewhere (at work in some sense). The best evidence of that was not feeling anxious about almost anything for 18 days. I didn't even read all of one (Eugen Herrigel's The Way of Zen; I commend it to those getting into being) of the books I'd taken for empty spots. I did, of course, take the machinery of my reflection along and tapped at it regularly, but not obsessively. More like there was a routine I follow which I enjoy, but am not preoccupied with. The result of being there was noticing things, and noting some noticed things in my standard breast pocket note pad for exploration. So, I was exercising awareness development without trying to.


Another evidence that I was there rather than somewhere else: my almost unflappable flexibility about all things travelling. Often I'm quite obsessive about certain aspects, with a tendency to angry irritation when things look a little out of line in the transport division (lateness, delays, etc.). Similarly, I found it pretty much totally easy to be with Jane's interest in visiting here and there. These are not things I would have chosen to do, but doing them was almost totally with unrestrained ease, followed often by interest (as reflected in some of June's blog posts). In a sense, I was accompanying her on her trip and found myself able to be with it all the way. She had done all the detailed trip construction tasks over months last year.



I realise that an insight I had in the Place St George in Toulouse (June 4, '10) applies here. This realisation is what I was heading for when I started this post 5 days ago though I didn't know I was coming here, yet I already knew the end three weeks ago! I wrote in my trusty notepad: "Being interested in others' interests is hard but if I am not (interested in them) I'm disconnected or disconnecting." My interest in her interests opened doors on other interesting things as well.


This being there (in France and Spain), being present to that experience and Jane's interests which drove it, allowed certain perceptions to occur in the open spaces of my unpreoccupied awareness – notably things to do with the mountains and waters, and their sounds in particular. I had another perception of a background sound in the Cafe Iruna (see excellent interior photo here) in Bilbao. On a Sunday afternoon, the day of our arrival from San Sebastian by bus, we got a table for two on family day (perhaps every day is, but this one was certainly so) in a visual marvel, with a nice medium buzz of humanity – animated but not loud. Part way into the consumption of the Menú del día, I became aware of a very light background rhythm, musical genre undistinguishable, but marked by running a little below the pace of breathing and operating almost at the visceral level of hearing.


Further through our meal (three courses and a whole bottle of quite drinkable local red for 37 Euros approx., tout compris!), a baby at one of the larger tables nearby started up the child's plea which touches all adults' hearts, one way or another. It's squally invasion was balanced by a slight rise in the general level of conversational noise in the room. No one I could see was orchestrating, but then maybe I was imagining….


…. being there happens like this. It's little wonder this beginner at being here has trouble being there! How could I have said that in 15 seconds between the waitress's deliveries?