Famous P

Words of Advice #1 (Continued)

I bet you're saying to yourself that Daddy really takes a long time between these posts. But that's cause daddy is a slacker and stuck in his own pathetic little rut of depression. You see, mom and I are living in St. Louis and I'm not working and we don't have access to our cash, despite having alot of it at this moment (Don't worry, it will probably be all gone by the time you get around. We recent sold the house where you were conceived and that's the cash we have now. But that's going to go into a new home for you because having to live in an apartment sucks ass...that's Daddy more direct and less circumspect than perhaps he should be. BUt that's part of what it means to be true to yourself, I think). I should be doing work; Lord knows I have alot of it to do what with finishing the dissertation and all. BUt Daddy is sad and isolated cause he can't really go anywhere and do anything except look and that seems even sadder. In any event, he doesn't really know anybody in this area and he misses his friends very much.

To build on what I said in my previous post, love is about making that connection with someone else that gives you a glimpse of truth, which is really a revelation, in a very fundamental way, of the fact that we are fundamentally connected to one another. Being human means being with humans, exaltedly naked, bare soft flesh against the hard cold edges of world and other. Awww, what the hell! I've suddenly lost my desire to continue on here.

All I really should say is that the best comfort you can take in the endeavor with the Other, with the other, with love and all the shit of life, is to be found in Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" especially in the epic account of the self that is "Song of Myself" (any true account of the self, because it must recognize (as any thing which purports to be a full account, a totality to put it formally) that which it is not, which is to say its negation in the Other, will always be epic in nature). The best summation of all that I was talking about before, and the greatest comfort one can find, is to be found in that whole poem but most especially in stanza 6. It's all about the connection of life and death to one another; ultimately, the thing we must all confront, is that the Other for all of us is death. That's why, even were we to live utterly and all apart from everyone else, there would still be that relation of Self and Other that defines who we are even to ourself. Because we all face that dilemma, be kind to your fellow human. Treat them with respect, sympathy and kindness no matter who they are and what they do, which doesn't mean that you can't be angry, loud, aggressive and all those other things that smaller intellects think of as inherently negative. Remember, the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. In that respect, anger can be understood (sometimes..we'll get into the qualifications of that later) as an act of love. It sounds strange I know. But really give it some thought and I think you'll see what I'm talking about.

Anyway, Whitman is a comfort. Read Stanza six at my funeral will you?