Much of 2017 was spent preoccupied wrestling with desire. Longing. Wanting. Fulfillment. And never quite satiating that need. I took to online means, as I did before, following a number of Instagram accounts of beautiful people - triathletes, models, dancers on various poles of the gender spectrum. Alas such following did not fill any void whatsoever. They just perpetuated a continued state of lacking - of comparison. This dawned on me after one of my teachers shared the following after meditation practice: "There are two selves: the one we present online that is gleaned and curated versus the one we live in real life (IRL)." Reality contains all the murk and dirt -the complexities of life- its positive and negative attributes whereas online identities one often creates an idealized portrait of who they are. When in reality, it is a facade. Guards are down online and as a result filterless - take it or leave it opinions - propagate the landscape. Is it any wonder that we have a filterless celebrity in the White House? This dawned on me however so slightly after the presidential election. I unplugged the TV. I closed my Facebook account as a shield to the constant opinionated wagoneering that amounted to nothing but increased anxiety; however, I started following users on Instagram to such a height that my feed was discriminating which accounts would appear. Following was not reciprocal. A nagging notion told me that my raw posts were too much to handle or take. I’ll never know why so and so unfollowed me. Maybe it was my identities, trauma, rawness and/or tenderness. In the end it didn’t matter for I just felt abandoned. On the dawning of the new year, I started to unfollow a large amount of users. The trauma hounds still followed me. Those in transformation be it spiritually, mentally or physically still followed me - yet the beautiful ones disappeared. It reminds me of a friend who said that she was so disgusted of the posturing of perfect relationships on Facebook when beneath the surface she knew all the dirt - the affairs, the abuse, the dysfunction. In essence, this desire to present the perfect self or unions presents humans as nothing more than robots of perfection. Cyborgs anyone? As I was walking around Lake Merritt, I overheard a middle aged woman complain about somebody de-friending someone else as if it was an ultimate betrayal - a conspiracy that warranted investigation. I laughed and wondered - “wow, if that really bothers you, I wonder how you would handle being abandoned?” The desire for validation of one’s online self as evident by the need for followers/friends often supersede the need for interaction IRL. My pleasure for bicycling took a dive after an assault (concussion, black eye, bruised left side, broken teeth resulting in two root canals). Job insecurity and an aging yet fit body served as a constant reminder of impermanence. Bureaucracy and the navigation of systems served as a constant reminder of my conditions. I maintained my daily meditation practices. Cycling took the proverbial back seat for two months. Much of 2017 was spent reading an enormous amount of spiritual texts on self-care, ascension, divinity, transformation and dreams. One book in particular - Working On Yourself Alone by Arnold Mindell (1990) - spoke to my fondness of the dance space. Using a syncretic formula of psychology mixed with East and West spirituality - Mindell presents different forms of meditation including dance. It spoke to the experience of accessing the Divine on the dancefloor, accessing past traumas, working through them and ultimately transforming. It dovetailed nicely with Johanna Cherry's Living Mastery: The Expression of Your Divinity (1997) and Jacqueline Small’s Transformers: The Therapists of the Future (1982). Thus my syncretic soup is slowly percolating. Its product soon to come. As I danced at the Uptown during the closing night of the Hanging Garden, a monthly goth club in Oakland, California, I accessed the divine after two months of not dancing. I sweated out the previous years pains: navigating a thankless job and a crippled safety net, divorce, solitude and transformation much on my own. Before long a huge sweat stain adorned the wall as I pounded it with my fists in unison with the beat as paint fell to the floor. Striking many yogic poses during the five hour night I attracted a couple mesmerized by my Spirit. I shared my techniques, enjoyed the admiration, withheld judgement and posed for photographs. I also shared the name of Jacqueline Small’s text since one of them is a therapist. By nights end I disappeared to the restroom - incognito - and changed out of my sweaty clothes. Unrecognizable to many, I rode home on my bike. Before the evening began I met Bella who also rode a bicycle to the venue. He shared that he used to go to the Twilight Zone as I had during my teen years only he commuted with friends from Santa Rosa - an hour away. We spoke of those who’ve passed on, fashion, abuse and its cycle. Then we were interrupted by Owen adorned in a ruffled neon blue sparkled skirt. Later, Owen and I spoke about the goth scene: how the Bay Area's scene is so friendly;how commuting for DJ gigs in Santa Cruz or Sacramento is not a big deal;how losing the Hanging Garden is like losing a child. Its these moments that touch me beyond the curated and gleaned presentations often presented online. Its beauty mesmerizing. And the joy unforgettable.
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AuthorDarren Brown, PhD. ArchivesCategories |