the simulated experience of sex

"Having sex can also complicate the way you perceive a potential partner. After sex, the brain releases oxytocin, which results in the warm, companionable feeling of love and the creation of the social bonds that facilitate co-operative child-rearing. Watch out: sex on a whim can lead to feelings of love for a person who is entirely wrong for you."

~ excerpt from the article Sexual attraction: the magic formula

Sometimes having sex with a person at the wrong time can make the experience of sex a pure simulation. Having sex generates these "warm, companionable feelings of love". This biological effect of sex can simulate all the biological signs of love without any love actually being there. It can simulate something that may not exist.

Sex is a beautiful gift because it can enhance the commitment and feelings that two people have for one another in the proper circumstances. Yet sex is also incredibly dangerous, because it can create the sensation of love without the substance. It makes you think you have what is real when you really don't.

the simulated experience of travel [1.b]

a little addendum

this notion of travel being a completely simulated experience is quite evident in this following passage from don delillo's white noise. the passage is quite funny and worth reading and the book itself is also fantastic! :

Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in AMerica. We drove twenty-two miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were forty cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides-- pictures of the barn taken from the eleveated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.

"No ones sees the barn," he said finally.

A long silence followed.

'Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."

He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others.

"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.

"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colours our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."

Another silence ensued.

"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.

He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.

"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now."

He seemed immensely pleased by this.

the simulated experience of travel [1.a]

"Indeed, in most cases it would appear that souvenir hunting is not a meaningful examination of place so much as it is a litmus test of our own whims and preconceptions as travelers."*

The passage above puts souvenir hunting in the order of simulation. Souvenirs are now mass produced to litter the shelves of various locales across the world. And we know that. We buy souvenirs, not because they are actual real artefacts from the location where we have travelled, but because they are something we buy in order to complete the experience of travelling-- absurd is the concept of going somewhere without returning with something. Our souvenir consumption exists on the order of simulation because we do not seek anything real in it, yet we do it anyways because it is part of our "whims and preconceptions as travelers." It is practiced in order to fit a societal concept of what travel should be.

Yet this article suggests that while much of our souvenir hunting exists in the order of simulation, our travel experience can still stand true and authentic. But I cannot help but be skeptical of that: today's travel getaways of tried-and-true locales like Paris or even to less frequented exotic locales have the scent of simulation to them. Numerous travel agencies sell "authentic travel experiences" for us to bottle, distill and possess as our own. A few photos of us standing in front of phallic-shaped monuments, token "native peoples," identical-to-postcard scenery confirm and seal the package. Even the itinerant backpacker goes, perhaps more to escape, more to have the "experience" than to truly be in a place.

What is travel? Does true travel still exist? Can we meaningfully examine a place? Or has today's consumer society completely eradicated any trace of the real. We go to places not to find a real locations populated by real people, but rather discover spaces completely dedicated towards recreating the experience of travel. The real world has been replaced by a world of simulation.

There are no longer places to go to, only simulated spaces. And so we cannot really go about a meaningful examination of a place, only consume the repetitive sensory perceptions of a space.

*this post responds to and quotes from Rolf Potts' article Why We Buy Dumb Souvenirs.
http://travel.news.yahoo.com/b/rolf_potts/rolf_potts4230 It's not necessary to read the article though to understand the post.

book reviews

looking for summer reading?

here are some lovely suggestions from my past reading.... i've sorted them by categories for your convenience :) if you do read any of these books, please talk to me about them. i like books. and i like talking about them :) if you are in my near vicinity, let me know and i can lend books to you (since most of these books were for class, i pretty much own all of them). and my books are happier if they're being read.

a pedestrian rating scale
4 stars- you really really really should read it
3 stars- it's probably worth the read whatever your interest
2 stars- it would be enjoyable to read especially if you have interest in the subject.
1 star- it would only be worthwhile to read if you're interested in the particular themes or subjects. the book would be useful for knowledge, for gaining an idea of the literature in that area but probably will not be all that enjoyable to read.

from spanish class
*** la bella durmiente (rosario ferre) | trans. sleeping beauty ~ a montage of tabloid articles, letters, photo album captions and interior monologue. a scathing attack against gender roles in puerto rican culture through the story of a ballerina and her eventual demise. i should just post my essay here...
*querido diego, te abraza quiela (elena poniatowska) | trans. dear diego, hugs quiela ~ about diego riviera's abandoned mistress in paris. told through letters written by the mistress, it tells the story of a growing and twisted obsession, an inability to get over someone and move on. i found it rather annoying and whining. i wanted to hit the girl on her head and tell her to get over it and get a life.
***ardiente paciencia (antonio skarmeta) | trans. burning patience. also published as el cartero de neruda, neruda's postman. ~ this was made into an italian film called the postman. it tells about the relationship between an ordinary postman and the famous chilean poet pablo neruda. it's an incredibly fun and entertaining read, serving both as a homage to neruda and poetry as well as giving a glimpse into chilean society and politics during salvador allende's (socialist) rise to power in the 1970's.
***las batallas en el desierto (jose emilio pacheco) | trans. battles in the desert ~ stream of consciousness-like retelling of mexican history. very short and very concise. a bildungsroman. a nostalgic tale for a past, that was just as corrupt, but where hope existed.

from asian american literature class
***dogeaters (jessica hagedorn) ~ an incredibly entertaining and delightful to read panorama of phillipine society-- a glimpse into everyone from a the biggest movie star to a male prostitute, and seeing the strands that link all these facets of society together.
coffin tree (Wendy-Law Yone) ~ about two refugees, brother and sister, escaping from Burma. i didn't particularly enjoy this book-- it was rather heavy handed and did not appear in any way out of the ordinary for me.
***blu's hanging (lois-ann yamanaka) ~ a fairly disturbing yet well-told story of three children who are trying to survive after the death of their mother. gives a good snapshot of hawaiin culture and social politics.
*the gangster we are all looking for (le thi diem thuy) ~ about refugees from vietnam. i actually never finished reading this book so i can't say much other than that the writing style is very simple, lyrical and almost detached.

from postcolonial literature class
**confessions of an english opium eater (thomas de quincey) ~ rather fun, entertaining and British. it is as the title states, but does a job on elaborating a British national identity as well as the role of opium and sympathy and the ability to access and experience that which we normally would have no access to. on a side note, here's an interesting article that actually discusses the influence of this book and other writers (i.e. coleridge) and on the actual addictive qualities of heroin.
*lucy (jamaica kincaid) ~ i highly enjoyed jamaica kincaid's novela a small place, but lucy was in all honesty a drag to read. the main character lucy was rather annoying and far-too-brooding and complex. there were some interesting passages though that are worth reading in order to rethink our historical reflex--the attitudes we have towards third-world nations that we consider normal, and yet when illuminated in the correct light, appear strange, bizarre, injust and absurd.
*lord jim (joseph conrad) ~ unless you are a liker of conrad, this is a heavy-read, but worth getting through-- like anything conrad, it is incredibly rich in commentary on truth, on life and existence. i heard it often takes two reads before you can really get it. about a man's tragic boating accident and how it affects him thereonafter-- a romantic's determination to live up to his ideals in a world that does not care about those ideals.

from my thesis (if you read either of these, you can talk to me and i can blab endlessly about them)
***hunger of memory (richard rodriguez) ~ written by a mexican american, a bildungsroman about his assimilation into america, centering around his attitudes towards language (along with, some interesting reflections on religion and politics). his theoretical abstractions are eloquent and enjoyable to read, and the book is also haunted by a beautiful but sad mood of mourning and nostalgia.
****the woman warrior (maxine hong-kingston) ~ a beautiful blend of fact and fiction constitutes this "autobiography". this book is well worth the read whether you are asian or not, whether you care about identity politics or not. it is basically a sort of asian american magical realism that tells about the delicate and complicated relationship between a mother and her daughter.

comics (what a narrative lies behind this! this is a private shoutout)
****sandman book #9: the kindly ones (neil gaiman) ~ the climatic book of the sandman series. i don't want to say too much, but despite the initially unsatisfying flat artwork, the book completely carries away. and it does an amazing character development of morpheus, touching upon a variety of different themes: unbearable weight, the desire to escape the mistakes one has made, the inability to change, weariness... anyways, this book is REALLY GOOD. you SHOULD READ IT! (but in order to do that, you need to read the first 8 books of the series.... remember: finish book 2 before deciding whether or not to go forward because book 1 is a somewhat awkward oddity, that is not representative of the rest of the series).
***sandman book #10: the wake (neil gaiman) ~ the denouement of the 10 book sandman series. a glimpse at funerals and contemplations on the meaning of death. and, most notably, a final particularly impactful glimpse at shakespeare's the tempest that can only be really appreciate if you've read the whole comic series, which you should do by the way.
***v for vendetta (alan moore) ~ the book behind the movie and in many ways, better than movie. evey's character had a much more a desperate yet naiive and innocent touch to her. her transformation even more striking. but what i loved about this book was its markedly ambiguous ending.

the suspicion of binaries [2.bb]

either unbearable weight or unbearable lightness part 2.b

just an addendum to the previous entry.

here are lyrics from a song by pedro the lion in his album control that capture "a christian's cry of burden in sin-separation from jesus".*

Wouldn't it be so wonderful
if everything were meaningless.
But everything is so meaningful,
and most everything turns to shit.

Rejoice
Rejoice
Rejoice

*quoted from a friend who is quite proficient at word mechanics and sounding smart

the suspicion of binaries [2.b]

either unbearable lightness or unbearable weight part 2

given Kundera's binary in the previous post, we are seemed to be left with two alternatives:

either, we choose the utter meaninglessness of unbearable lightness, accepting that this life is ephemeral, the consequences of our actions transient and that nothing really matters: everything is pardoned in advance and cynically permitted.

or, we choose to accept the concept of eternal return, where our actions do have consequence, but one of eternal impact-- an idea that is both immensely desirable, for it gives us a purpose, it endows us with significance, yet also incredibly terrible for the amount of responsibility it weighs upon us.

most of the time, we seem to live under both curses. we feel weighed down and burdened, perhaps not by the sense of the responsability, but by the constant need to prove and to find our self-worth, our significance in the world and in the lives of other people. yet, this is paralleled by the haunting feeling that perhaps all this is really just meaningless.

yet in jesus we find freedom from both these curses. he can both alleviate us from the unbearable lightness of being while also freeing us from the heavy burden of eternal return. he says:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

we are no longer airy, ephemeral, misty beings, passing through this life, to leave nothing more than an alteration of the breeze. rather, our actions can have eternal significance, everlasting weight. we share jesus' yoke-- we partake in his purpose, in his meaning.

at the same time, this purpose is not burdensome. we are not judged according to how much we accomplish, how much we gain or earn or change, but rather we carry this burden in full dependence of god. because we share jesus' yoke, it is not heavy for jesus is gentle and humble in heart. in fact, he carries our yoke precisely because we have already stumbled and fallen and proven ourselves unable to bear it. instead, it is he, not us, that sustains its eternal weight.

it is unbearable weight made bearably light.

the suspicion of binaries [2.a]

either unbearable weight or unbearable lightness part 1

The idea of the eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?

Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.

Will the war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century itself be altered if it recurs again and again, in eternal return?

It will: it will become a solid mass, permanently protuberant, its inanity irreparable.

If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one. There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.

Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

...

... the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.

~

If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).

If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.

But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

Parmenides posed this very question in the sixth century before Christ. He saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: light/darkness, fineness/coarseness, warmth/cold, being/nonbeing. One half of the opposition he called positive (light, fineness, warmth, being), the other negative. We might find this division into positive and negative poles childishly simple except for one difficulty: which one is positive, weight or lightness?

~ excerpts from the opening chapters of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being

to be continued...

the suspicion of binaries [1]*

either freedom or love in the pursuit of happiness

in our american society, two concepts appear crucial to the pursuit and attainment of happiness: love and freedom**

although these two ideas are often portrayed in popular culture in a way that may make us not take them as seriously (take chick flics and flagrant consumerism), they nevertheless resonate deeply within us. when we try to imagine a happy life- we imagine ourselves with someone that we have fallen in love with, we imagine ourselves with the freedom to do whatever we want (implying that we can choose to do what will make us happy).

yet, these two pillars of happiness are conceived as being mutually exclusive. if you love, you are in a binding commitment to another and you are not free. if you are free, you will not experience the joys of a life committed to another. (take even the ending of the incredibly bad movie Catwoman, where Catwoman finds love and freedom mutually exclusive. she either stays with the man she loves and experiences confinement or can opt to leave him and experience freedom.)

so it seems, that under this system, we can never have happiness in its completion- since experiencing love precludes us from experiencing freedom, and experiencing freedom precludes us from experiencing the fullness of love.

however, Jesus suggests otherwise. for Him, what is true freedom is precisely the opposite of what we consider freedom. for us, freedom is the absolute ability for us to choose how to live our lives, to choose to how to express ourselves and how to go about pursuing things that will make us happy or give us pleasure.

yet for Jesus, true freedom is not found in this pursuit of things for the self, but rather true freedom is found in being able to escape the self, to escape the selfish desires that more often confine us than liberate us. it is only in love that true freedom is found. it is only in loving others, that we can cast off the chains of selfish wants and desires and needs, and discover a refreshing, liberating and delightful freedom in commiting ourselves to the well being of another (yet this is also a freedom that suffers, since if we love, we make ourselves vulnerable to hurt, and to hurt for).***

but unless we love, we only experience freedom in a lesser, perverse form. a freedom that allows us to do whatever we want, without any sense of purpose attached to it, except perhaps the satisfaction of our own desires. and if that is the ultimate purpose of our lives, then i must say it is rather a dismal and despairing one. one that gives me little hope of true happiness.

* i guess anyone who studies postmodernism, or postcolonialism, must be suspicious of them. and yes, this should ring red siren lights becuase the series on 'the great divide' is dealing precisely with some almost-binaries. be suspicious! perhaps not all of them are so simply either/or.
**though recently, the latter, freedom, has been priviledged over the former as the plethora of failed and unhappy marriages seems to have torn down any idealized notions of love. if love does bring us happiness, then we don't seem to be very good at doing it. freedom seems a little easier.
*** i mean love in the agape sense (not just romantic)- a self sacrificial love, not the kind of feeling that we often mistake for love- which is the outpouring of affection and service in the hope of being loved in return.