A Place in The Symbolic Order

She read the email on her small laptop with a slight sense of curiosity. It was a small update from her mom.
“Erin’s doing fine, she lives in Massachusetts, Tess lives in Germany with her boyfriend and she teaches English, Shelly lives in London.”
She nodded to herself. They were all short one-liners about friends she had lost contact with years before, but she felt satisfied and reasonably caught up. Then her brain did a little twist and she smiled when she realized she didn’t know anything. She had no idea what Tess saw every morning on her way to work or what her boyfriend looked like or how she felt close to midnight when she looked out a window. She knew nothing about her old friends, just a few simple words. Germany, boyfriend, teaching. Three simple words that helped her place Tess within the world. She had never even been to Germany, but she imagined Tess walking on a cobblestone street eating a sausage. It was her own imagination that made her feel like she knew how Tess was doing. Those three words gave her images, they gave her pictures and implications that had nothing to do with the Real, or with what was really true, but the three simple words satisfied her curiosity for a moment. Now she knew.

She wondered what her own mother had said about her. Did she make up a few lies or did she simply give them her location on the planet and another word about her job. They probably nodded and were satisfied, just as uncurious about the details as she had been. They would be able to imagine her somewhere within San Francisco and that would be enough. Everyone would nod while taking another bite of dinner, imagining her somewhere next to a red Golden Gate...yes, that was San Francisco She was placed, comfortable within the symbolic order. They would have no idea that she lived in a large studio with a backyard full of trees and flowering shrubs. They would not know that she woke up every Sunday morning and sold bread at the farmer’s market and felt tired afterwards and then would go home and start working and soon someone with a friendly voice would call her and she would smile and feel her chest lift and lift and a smile within her would burst and appear on her lips. They would know none of that, just as she knew nothing about them. She lived in San Francisco. Erin lived in Massachusetts. That was enough to know.

Because a simple word will easily place us within the symbolic order, what we do can easily be explained with a sentence.
“I’m a saleswoman…”
“I’m a musician…”
“I’m writing a story….”
“I live in London…”
You will see a head nod, the chin rising up and down slowly, yes… it is understood. They can picture someone behind a counter and a cash register. They can picture someone with a guitar and hear some music in their head, they can picture a book and a pen…it is all easily understood, you are now known. There will be no further questions, you have been placed within the symbolic order.

Because it can all be so easily explained, we can hide what we do. Never mind that the dark mystery envelops you in a crystal sheath and takes you beyond the realm of words, somewhere that cannot be explained. It is not for the world to know.
People are satisfied with a one-liner. Your emotions, the way the light fades slowly out the bedroom window and makes you feel like the twilight holds every secret in the world, it cannot be explained with a word and it can never be known. They think they know you with a word, let them. The things which cannot be explained with words will always remain invisible. If it cannot be explained, it will not be seen.
We can hide what we need from the world even when we live among the crowds in the city. We can even show ourselves to them, we can show our books and art, and as long as there is a word to describe it (colors on a piece of paper is called “art”) then they will feel like they understand. If what is true is spoken, then it will be changed. It cannot be otherwise.

A woman is working undercover for the CIA. She pretends to be the girlfriend of a gangster and follows him around the world, reporting his whereabouts whenever she can to the authorities. In her role as the gangster’s girlfriend, she pretends to be sexually interested in another man in order to lure him into her bedroom to gain his trust. It will be his trust in her which makes him go to a secluded field and wait for a man which will never show up, which is what the gangsters want. But after sleeping with him, she develops true feelings for him. What she had once pretended, what had once been a cloud of dust and lies has become real.

A young boy wants to be a doctor. He sees his father dressed in a white lab coat, grabbing a thermos cup of coffee before heading out the front door to perform a few surgeries, and that is what he envisions for himself. He wants to be in that lab coat, kissing his wife goodbye before he goes off to save a couple of lives. The boy spends his evenings studying a mountain of books and because of his intense effort, he gets into college and then becomes an intern in a hospital a few miles from a choppy ocean. After a few years of intense memorization and fourteen hour days and many tests, his internship is complete and he is now a doctor. He now wears a spotless lab coat and walks on the shiny linoleum floors with shined shoes. Patients call him “doctor” and he interacts with them using a tone of authority. As a sign if status, he buys an expensive watch, which is what every doctor on his ward wears.
The only thing Real is the watch. It can be seen and felt. The symbolic order creates the “doctor.” There are extensive ideas of what doctors should do and wear. How they should act, what they should drive. None of these are inherently real. These things do not make a doctor, they do not determine if someone has the know how to set bones or perform surgery. A lab coat does not make a doctor, but within the symbolic order, it does. The role of doctor is adopted and acted out.

In the symbolic order, little girls are given dolls and tea sets and pink clothes. The babies do not come out of the womb asking for these particular things, but they are given them by adults because within the symbolic order, that is what girls play with, that is what they like. Little boys like sports because they are told they do. They prefer blue because they are given clothes in that particular color. Eventually, after enough time, little boys do actually like basketball and little girls really do like to play with their dolls. What was not real to begin with has become real. The girl is placed in the symbolic order as a girl, she acts like a girl and is given “girl” things and then, she becomes a girl. Pink clothes are not an inherent part of having a vagina, but within the symbolic order, at least in the United States, it is.

If a little boy is only given pink clothes and tea sets and baby dolls, he will probably grow up liking them and playing with them. It will be all he has ever known. But when he steps into the broader symbolic order, where most boys play with trucks and wear blue, there will be a serious clash. To the boys in his school, he will be seen as “other.” They will not understand why he is not like them, and they will search for a way to explain it and place him within their symbolic order.
Placing someone or something within the symbolic order is a quest for Order. To make sense of chaos. The boy who likes pink because he was given pink (just like the other boys like blue because they were given blue) will be called gay or sissy or whatever word can be used to place him in the symbolic order. It will be the word used to understand him. One word will be enough to provide the explanation.

Our purpose is to be awake within the symbolic order. It existed long before us, it will continue after the last breath of our body. Our purpose is to be free to fit in or not. Our purpose is to be awake enough to have a choice. The left hand path is the path of breaking the rules of the symbolic order.
The symbolic order has been given to us, it has been placed on us since birth. It was imposed upon us by parents and teachers, just as it was imposed upon them as infants. No one chose it, we stepped into the role that was placed before us and pretended to “be” until we “became.” The left hand path breaks the rules of the symbolic order. That is one of the choice at our disposal. We can also choose to fit into the symbolic order without becoming identified with it.

A little boy is dressed in a fancy suit every Sunday and brought to a small church with a white steeple. He copies what his parents do. He kneels and clasps his hands in front of his heart, he bends his head forward slightly and closes his eyes. He asks for things he wants while his eyes are closed and he imagines something, somewhere, fulfilling his wishes. Soon, after enough imitation, the boy comes to church thinking that he has made the decision, he has chosen this path for himself. He is now a full grown believer. He is too identified to see that the people around him on the wooden pews have all been taught this just like he was. They simply imitated the others around them, just like monkeys learn to ride bicycles and wash their socks or bang shellfish until the shell cracks.
We do as we were shown and religion is no exception. Our choice can be to come into the small church, to feel the pressure of the floor as we kneel, to drink in the scent of the candles, to close our eyes and act out the part without becoming identified, without being absorbed into the act, without letting the imposed symbolic determine the real.

Kitchen Challenge

The scene was unveiled with the pull of a black velvet curtain. We watched from the comfort of a soft bed, surrounded by four walls which held in dry warmth and the sporadic clicks of two touching bodies. A couple feet from a well stocked kitchen, on the carpet which delineated the dining room from the tiled cleanliness of the cooking space, was a stylish craps table. A master chef in his spotless white jacket stood before it, two oversized dice in his hands. Two clear groups stood before him, a group of five women wearing white chef’s jackets with red collars and a group of four men wearing blue trimmed jackets.
The dice themselves had twelve faces. Each face displayed not a number, but a letter of the roman alphabet. The master chef explained the objective: each group would be given five rolls, one for each member of the team (the blue team would get one extra roll). Depending on the letter on the dice, each aspiring chef would pick a food ingredient beginning with the same letter. The true goal was to think as a unit and to come up with an entrée together…each team member building off the words/ingredients of their teammates. They would cook the dish to completion and the head chef would judge and proclaim a winner.
The women’s team went first. A young woman stepped to the table and threw the die… an “r.”
“Okay,” said the head chef, “what food do you want to pick that begins with an ‘r’?”
“Rabbit,” she said with total confidence.
Now it was up to her teammates to build off this main ingredient. A woman with dark skin and dreadlocks picked up the die, she cast it… “g”…. “green beans.” Two more young women rolled…there would be garlic and potatoes as well, as one chef said, “all the ingredients for a classic entrée.”
And then it was the men’s turn. A tall man approached the table. He had the face of a young marine or soldier, but in this play, he chose to be a chef. He held the die in his large hands, holding them for a split second while he prayed… “h”… “halibut.” His teammate rolled, there was an “f” on the table. He stood there, with lights and cameras and the eyes of his teammates silently trying to send him a psychic answer. His face was sweaty and pale, he was shaking his head as though there was nothing he could think of… “figs.” There was laughter from the women’s team and looks of stark concern from the men. Who had ever paired figs and halibut before? He walked back to the group with his head down as the next man stood before the table.
“Alright,” said the master chef, “remember you’re trying to compliment the ingredients of each other, you need to think as a team.”
The man at the table nodded, he cast his die. An “a” sat perfectly still on the black lined table. He started shaking his head too, as though there was nothing to be done, defeat written all over his face… “angel hair pasta.” Roaring laughter from the women filled the room, as though they already had an easy victory…who had ever paired pasta with figs? Then came another “a”…. “apples.” It was the last turn for the blue team…. “t,” as though in a sign of assured defeat, as though putting the last nail into the coffin was the job of the dark haired man with a cast on his arm… “tomatoes.” One of the women nearly fell over laughing.
“Okay,” said the head chef, “you have 45 minutes to cook.”
Both teams ran into the kitchen. The second hand moved with a speed only available under pressure. The men took a bit of time talking about their approach, drawing on a large piece of paper while they worked out their plan. The women went straight to cutting the tips off the green beans and marinating the rabbit breast and creating a garlic puree, each woman doing her own thing.
“You better move you asses, the women are already cooking!”
It was the voice of authority. The men jumped…one began creating the sauce of tomatoes and a hint of figs, another working on the fish, another on the pasta.
“Okay guys,” said the dark haired man stirring the sauce, “come taste this and tell me if it needs anything.”
The small group of men gathered around, each dipping a spoon into the bubbling sauce.
“Oh my god…that’s actually good!”
“I know…I can’t believe it!”
A hint of joyous energy began to jump between them.
“At least we still have a shot at this!”
The camera panned out for a couple of seconds and then moved to the women’s side of the kitchen. A young freckled woman was pureeing the garlic for a sauce. The women gathered to taste.
“You know,” said the woman with dreadlocks, “I think it’s a little too garlicky, maybe we should add some sugar to it to cut down the bite.”
“Naw, that’s how it’s supposed to be, it’s supposed to be strong.”
The freckled girl poured the pale sauce in an artistic swirl around the plate.

“Five, four, three, two, one…okay stop! Bring me the dishes.”
Two plates stood before the master chef. He took a bite of the rabbit and garlic, then another bite of the fish with figs…
“Wow, those are both good dishes.” He stood nodding his head in approval. “The fig and tomato sauce is actually very good…okay…the winner is…the blue team.”
The men hugged each other.
“You know,” said the master chef, “the rabbit is delicious, the only problem with that dish is the overwhelming garlic sauce, it’s just way too strong and overpowering everything else.”
The men smiled brightly, they were still dizzy with the realization that surprising wonder can be found in unexpected places. Without being completely forced to use those particular ingredients, no one would have ever paired figs and fish or pasta, but because they had to, because they were forced to, they used every bit of creative inspiration and cooking knowledge they had to try and create something unique and palatable. The women had an easy chance to win, they had classic ingredients, known ingredients that had been paired with each other for many, many years. The women had ingredients that sounded reasonable and known and acceptable…it was the men that were in no-man’s land, in completely unfamiliar territory. For the women, there had been no risk, but more than that, the very objective of the task had been to work as one, to build off each other and to compliment not only the ingredients but the skill set of the other team members, and in this, they failed. The deciding factor had been the garlic sauce, the very piece of the puzzle that did not have the spirit of collaboration within it.
It takes more than perfect building blocks to create something beautiful. With a sense of creative collaboration, you can take fish and figs and apples and pasta and tomatoes and create magic. You can take the most bizarre combinations and work them and re-work them and brainstorm and practice and stir and struggle and struggle some more and maybe…maybe something completely unexpected and truly glorious will emerge, something beyond the known, something far greater than you could have ever foreseen.

Octave

She was in the 400 quad, a cluster of classrooms in the shape of a square donut, each room’s door facing the cement courtyard outside that was marked with small patches of green grass in the process of turning yellow. It was the quad for math and chemistry, the quad where she had mostly learned to tune out and endure with open eyes but shuttered attention. Inside Mr. Payne’s classroom were six rows of steel legged chairs topped with a single piece of plastic that acted as both backrest and seat bottom. Six rows began five feet away from the blackboard and six chairs behind it stretched towards the back wall. Whether chosen or assigned, the chairs in the back tended to be filled with the failing and apathetic. Whether by design or happenstance, the tendency seemed to move through those back chairs like an angel feeding on determination and understanding. It was in one of these seats where she sat, just two chairs away from the back wall. It was true, she did not want to be there. She did not want to be in this small classroom, not in this sprawling school, not chained as she felt she was. She wanted to run through open fields and chat with runaways on the streets of Venice and splash in the ocean that beat against quiet rocks only an hour away. But she was complicit in her own constriction, driving everyday to this place, walking her body to each required class, coming back after lunch, the same routine each day until she couldn’t stand it and she would purposely drive past Indian Hill Blvd and keep on going till she hit the 10 freeway, then she let intuition guide her along cemented veins and to the strange encounters and mysteries that were waiting in the distance.
But most days, she found herself in Mr. Payne’s classroom. She occupied her time in many ways, but always aware of the slow moving second hand on the wall. As always, the man wore black running pants to school and paired it with a white T-shirt and unzipped running jacket. The material of his pants made a swishing sound as he walked and the elastic waistband accentuated his bubble butt. On top of the pants, around his waist, he accessorized with an overstuffed black leather fanny pack that bulged in the center and drooped down at a point, looking like a extra large penis. She saw him pull something out of it only once, she watched him curiously as he dug in deep for a calculator. It was his teaching style to turn his back to the class and work out math problems on the blackboard, mostly talking to himself in a slightly louder voice that if she paid attention, she could understand. But she didn’t care enough about it to weed through the gauze.

She had come back a few months ago from six weeks in Italy and she had been electrified ever since. Although she sat like a self-imposed prisoner, she let her mind drift and her hand draw. She brought her sketchpads to class, Mr. Payne’s and others, no teacher ever asked her to stop. She did what she called, “stream of consciousness” drawings. She was in the habit of using either blue or black ink pens and she would start by putting her pen to the paper. She would allow her hand to move, making a mark. She would just watch her hand, like watching a foreign object with a mind of its own. The pen would touch the white and it would all begin. She let her hand expand on the ink marking. Her mind would quiet and she would watch it all, her hand moving with quick intelligence. Lines turned into bulbous shapes and then those bulbous shapes expanded into other worlds. For many months she had let her hand move and work, turning mistakes into shapes and two dimensional movement.
She had done it enough times that she realized a particular process would always occur. She would begin the drawing, then at a particular point within the life of the piece she would come to the “uncomfortable stage,” the place where the drawing was only a rough outline of what was to come. There were forms, but none were finished. Sometimes she would step out of herself and look objectively at the paper. Seeing it this way, she would see scribbles and lines and messy ink markings. But this was also the stage of profound trust. The stage that always came but which also ended. She would dive back into the piece then, watching her hand, letting her body carry on, moving as it wanted, marking as it liked. She knew, very, very deeply, that the uncomfortable place was part of the process, a place to travel through that would end in delight and something she could never have planned.
Time and again, she would reach the uncomfortable stage and she would keep drawing, turning the page to the left or to the right, sometimes turning it upside-down until she saw a form or shape she recognized and then her hand would start expanding on the vision; and when there was nothing recognizable, she was content to create shapes that danced and twirled in on themselves. The uncomfortable stage was never the end, it was just the small hurdle, the gap that required patience to swim though, and for many years she trusted that knowledge.

But like a stone battered by a single drop, she eventually forgot the process, forgot the necessity of the uncomfortable stage, the same one that would occur over and over with each piece. Sometimes she would still draw, but she would hit the uncomfortable stage and get stuck. She would look at the piece of paper with critical intentions, through the eyes of another and she would see something ugly and unclean and unfinished. At this stage she would stop, thinking once again that she had failed. And she hit the wall over and over, always thinking that she had forgotten something. That she had forgotten how to draw or had lost inspiration…but she had forgotten the process. She stopped picking up pens and looking for paper and letting her hand take the reins, she thought that drawing was something that had come and gone, just like the force Bob Dylan had talked about in an interview she read a long time ago. It was something that had come in, from another place, from a place without words. It went through her, and now, she could not get back there.

And after many years of wandering a desert made of angst and tears and open questioning, she learned again about the uncomfortable stage, she learned another way to understand the gaps within the process. She looked at the intervals within the octave, the places to easily fall and be derailed, and she remembered that she had once recognized this interval when she had no name for it, and she had intuitively known that it was something that needed to be crossed with passion and zeal. And now, with a new language, she could begin again. It would all start with a new DO.

Objective Nature

The wind blows… down the street, through the tiny red leaves of a maple tree, pounding against the pane of glass at the end of Burwood Dr. In the driveway of 356 Burwood, I lay facedown, cold and still. The wind caresses my wavy brown hair, moving it like a tender lover’s hand, but I do not respond, I am cold and still. The wind does not cry with my mortal absence. It plays with the edge of my skirt and hardens the line of blood dripping from my mouth, turning it from red to crusted brown. The wind does not cry. The rain does not despair when it sees my vacant eyes and pale blue lips. The drizzle of raindrops vibrates against my skin, but I feel nothing. The cold does not give me goose bumps, the wind does not send my teeth chattering. The rain pours and washes the blood from my mouth. They play upon me, but they do not cry. They will not rejoice, they will not sing, they will not scream. The ants will traverse my curves, I am a new mountain to climb. Soon, the vultures will come, they have found another meal. But there will be no party and no time of mourning. Nature is neutral, a kaleidoscope of forces that move softly, that move violently, that kills and breeds and explodes into delicate layers and intricate snowflakes.

The wonderful tree we all enjoyed for its shade and regal branches and sculpted movement, it was torn down by the wind, fifty years of growth destroyed in a single stormy night. And the leaves crackled when the sun came out and we despaired that our beloved tree was gone, but the squirrels were not sad and the stray cats did not worry and the broken boughs did not laugh.

When the jasmine bush toppled under its own weight and the wind coming from the sea, I worried about the little birds that once played in its hidden chambers, would they think we destroyed their home? I regretted sawing through green vines and white flowers to clear the path, but the plant did not mourn its transformation. It grew and moved and toppled in neutrality.

Birth, death, rebirth, death. There is no intention behind it all, no malice, no pleasure. The wind simply moves. It is a force without emotion. It takes down houses and trees and telephone poles without revenge or care. It moves. Rains descend freely from thick gray clouds, giving no thought to inconvenience or floods. It comes without associations. The rain will not win any bets if we live, it cares not for our thirst or if we make lemonade. It comes from a cloud, moves down a river, down the mountain and to the reservoir, to the tap, to the pitcher, through my body and then out again, down the toilet, to the sea. It frets not for its voyage or transformation, moving from one location to another. The droplet is not tinged with salt, not a trace of sadness colors its orb while the blood is cleansed from my mouth.

In creation, there is no good or bad, these are invented words, invented perception.
There only IS.
Fire, water, life, hunger, destruction, it moves, it comes and goes and it all comes from a neutral place, neither hoping for our survival or vying for our defeat.
I lay still and cold.

Forgotten Circus

The notebook stretches its imposed lines across my field of my vision. The blue lines of formality, rigidity…they are the lines of frigid women in black dresses that reach up to their necks, the impotent men that squirm at the thought of my oozing love, enough love to cover the world if given enough time and enough fingers. But my cupboards are not filled with plain white paper, the lines of chastity are useful, despite their sexless impulse… I use them for their discipline, for their linear spankings. Order from chaos, I cast out the net into the cosmos and pull back orange starfish and leopards. Instead of hoops, I jump through a singular diamond eye and find a magician waiting for me in a metal cage. I take his top hat and shrink it, placing it on my head with a firm nod to the fashion critics who sit in the bleachers, they applaud in short bursts of excited fury, looking to each other with disbelief in one eye and tears in the other. Their moving hands hide the daggers well, their polite smiles mask the ventriloquist who has already spoken to Vogue. I cannot tell if they have drunk from the same glass as the women of the lines. “Lick it up!” I shout, “there’s more in the back!” The crowd stands to applaud. The bleachers are full and there’s a performance for the new king. The trapeze is set and taught, the elephants are glittering in their jeweled crowns and painted saddles, their riders are bejeweled in head-dresses and their faces are masked in lace and their small chests are bound in tight black bodices that describe their curves as only a true poet could. They balance on tiptoes above the great gray beasts, like fairies that ride the magic waves of night. The king is ready and seated, the jesters have finished with their truths and the jury waits to judge. The magician is full of old secrets and as the people turn towards us, we escape together through the diamond eye of the leopard, back to a room with carpets and strange light bulbs with no strings and a dry heat that smells of vitamins and soft black hair and warm welcoming arms. He holds my hand as we step through prismatic light seeped in yellow and gold, the color of tigers and opened treasure chests. He takes my hand and we step through, my blindfold forgotten on the sandy floor of the cage. My eyes remember this magic chamber of music. We have left a king waiting upon his throne, we have left sad clowns who look in desperation to their barking dogs and critics who look to their companions for ideas. We mean them no harm, but the curtain called and the lens of the crystal ball gathers us like prophecy. We are together and we disrobe, revealing our true forms, the shapeless crystals that shine more brightly than the night.