Continuation Sickness

What I've been reading - May 2024

Sacrament was the first Clive Barker novel I read as a teenager (I'd already read some of the Books of Blood) and it's one of my favorite books period. Will Rabjohns is a photographer who focuses on endangered animals, and the book opens with him trying to get some good shots of polar bears, one of which mauls him and leaves him in a coma. While in the coma, he relives a childhood encounter with two mysterious figures whose influence shaped his life dramatically. He's also possessed by the spirit of a fox, which calls itself Lord Fox.

It's good, it's got queer politics and draws parallels between AIDS and extinction and questions of reproduction and futurity. I cried so hard at the end this time, which I wasn't really expecting, but both the spiritual and the personal themes have much more meaning and relevance to me now than when I was younger.

It seems to me, we must invent religion every moment, as the world invents itself, for the only constant is in inconstancy.

All Marxist theory tends to be kinda dry and tedious, but Rosa Luxemburg at least can be sarcastic and snarky in a way that's entertaining. That being said, I don't feel like I got as much out if this volume compared with the first. There was a fairly detailed analysis of the history of political economy and Marx's place in it, as a part of an attempt to solve the problem of capital accumulation. And a response to some of her critics. I think I'm done with stuff like this for a while.

For Love of Matter is one of the most philosophically beautiful books I've read in a while. It seeks an alternative not only to western dualism, but also to any idealism or materialism split from that dualism - in other words, a panpsychism which rejects any dichotomy between material and mental qualities. All that exists has a "subjectival dimension." Therefore, so-called individual selves obtain their selfhood by partaking in the subjectivity of the One, the universe as a whole. This intersubjectivity can be directly experienced, without loss of individuality, by means of "erotic" encounter. Eros is invoked as a way of understanding the contact between one subjectivity and another, as subject, rather than as objectified matter.

I find this deeply appealing. Since I was fairly young, I've felt a kind of eroticism pervading all of my experience of the world, in a way that is fundamental and inescapable. I've struggled to find the language to explain it, though. And sometimes I've felt compelled to hide or repress it, from the sense that it's embarrassing or inappropriate to feel that way. It's more intense when I'm relaxed, when I'm alone, when I'm surrounded by nature, and when I'm at peace with myself. And it often seems to come out in my writing.

Despite its attempts to position its perspective between the extremes of mystical self-dissolution and repressive egoism, I feel like this book speaks to my interest both in mysticism and in a kind of anti-individualist current in certain thinkers that goes very much against this model of intersubjectivity. I think I might return to it again at some point, there's a lot there to work through and think over.

Encounter has here been described as a mode of eros, and love as an issue thereof. But is love really too fulsome a term for a metaphysical attitude, a stance towards reality? Is it sentimental to speak of loving things in the way one loves a friend? Perhaps. But consider the following thought experiment. Picture how your own familiar world of things would appear to you if you were to return to it after a long interval of death. Would you not feel like fondling every humble artifact in your old house? Would you not reach to touch every brick in the wall and crack in the pavement, every lamppost in the street? Would you not greet the clouds in the sky, the dust on the ground, the broken-down trees in the vacant lot, as dearest friends? Even the things you had regarded as intolerable in life, such as the glare and noise of rushing traffic, or neighbors’ loud music, would be regarded now with wry affection, for the sake of the sheer force and busy-ness of their being—precious being!

Welp. The Psychopath's Bible certainly is an interesting read. A good chunk of it just seems to be telling a certain kind of person what they want to hear (and not the kind of person typically described as a psychopath). Which, given some of the content (and much of the tone), is probably intentional. At its best, there's some decent and fairly unique critiques of authority, identity, media, language and civilization. At its worst, it's just an elaboration of an all-too-familiar reactionary egoism, complete with a Nietzsche quote and reference to Ayn Rand. When that aspect of it shines through it's almost like a stereotype of an edgy libertarian atheist, which I was for a while as a teenager. Anything that reminds me of that period of my life tends to make me cringe.

I don't regret reading it, but I don't know what exactly to think of it. Maybe it should be read as a kind of satire? It's clearly not meant to be taken at face value, but I have no idea how it's meant to he taken.

Unlearning Shame is so, so good. The core of its message is contrast between what it calls "systemic shame" and "Expansive Recognition." Systemic shame is a way of understanding how the various systems we're embedded in make us feel shame for things we can't control (and, realistically speaking, we can't control much at all as individuals, especially not when we're affected by shame). The book goes into extreme detail about how it works at different scales, and offers numerous exercises to help work through the feelings and consequences produced by systemic shame in your own life. That first half of the book was amazingly helpful and healing for me, and I'm grateful for it.

The concept of Expansive Recognition is good, but I felt like some of how it was described and some of the advice for how to apply it wasn't very helpful for me personally. I'm very much not a social person. With few exceptions, I generally don't like close relationships, and that's not because of shame. If anything, shame is what has driven me to try and be more social in the past. Several people have told me I just have some shyness to get over, or I need to come out of my shell, and while I faked it for a while (in some contexts at least) the recognition I always needed was that solitude and privacy are extremely important to me.

I really appreciate Devon Price and his work, but I can't agree with the argument that building social connections is the only way to heal from shame. I've found my healing in other ways, and the result has been that I've gotten more withdrawn and isolated, not less.

Tell Me I'm Worthless was a little different than I expected. It's very much a book about fascism, and the ways it shapes everyone's experience. The haunted house at the center of the narrative works as a way of exploring the temptation to use fascism as a coping mechanism, more or less. The character Alice is a trans woman who resembles a lot of trans women I've met online, in that I see just enough of myself in her to feel alarmed by the shockingly stark differences (presumably caused by how much less I've used social media or the internet in general). I'm not sure that's the best way to put that, but I'm having trouble thinking of a better way to word it. At any rate, I didn't find the book as upsetting as I expected to, based on its reputation. But I did enjoy it, the ending was solid, and the satirical portrayal of TERFs was quite on point.

Only loosely related to the books, but I'm having trouble with the internet in general. I deleted the bluesky account I made not long ago, which was an attempt to be social online again. Which was a mistake. I need space, and social media feeds feel crowded to me. I'm back to simply browsing the stuff I follow with RSS, which is obviously serparate from this blog and from bear as a platform.

Unlearning Shame kinda helped me realize why I keep feeling the compulsion to try and return to a social context: aside from the fact that social media has kind of consumed the internet, I also just feel like I'm lacking in some way as a person because of how little I socialize with anyone. Not because I feel any real need to socialize more or to make more connections than I already have, but just because the world (and sometimes especially the internet, at least in terms of its structure) reflects a much more social life as the norm. But that's just not me.

I want to share my writing, and I want to talk about books. But I also want my privacy, and to keep my writing in a separate space from any interaction with other people. I didn't even share all the books I read this month. It's so hard to find a balance between satisfying my desire to speak to the world (or into the void) with my need to hide myself away from everyone and everything.

Life is exhausting.

#books