The Valley Below

This post was inspired by the #weblogpomoama challenge, from Annie, which prompted another Annie’s question and response, which prompted the first Annie’s re-response, which inspired me to reply, so a heartfelt thank you to both (all) of them. As the first (?) Annie wrote, my answer is not an argument with previous replies, it is my personal perspective, or what the question has brought up, for me. If you wish, please “ask me anything”, my email is in the footer, although I don’t promise satisfying answers.

What makes you vulnerable?

Being alive makes me vulnerable. I am vulnerable by nature. If I have been made, then my maker has made me vulnurable. Therefore most of what I have to do, in order to be vulnerable, is “just to let go”, although (as most are aware) that’s easier said than done. In my experience, “just letting go” involves (paradoxically) study and effort. It is a blessing (of God) to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is a prerequisite for anything worthwhile. (Isn’t it?) Love, learning (and therefore, intelligence, wisdom), pleasure. At least, worthwhile from a human (mortal) perspective.

I am vulnerable primarily through my embodiment and my attachments to other bodies, including ecological, political/legal, “marketplace”, and local community interdependence, all of the people (living or dead) whom I love, or embodied children of various modalities (including animal companions and, in a weird way, writing, more on that below). My embodied presence makes me especially vulnerable. The mere fact of my body, (my heart could just stop), its vulnerability to injury by another body, (I could get long covid, etc.), its vulnerability to social or political conditions, and/or punishments, my vulnerabilities as an immigrant, (I am helpless in so many ways), my vulnerability if I were to “run out into the jungle”, etc. My body is constituted almost as pure vulnerability, every part of it is subject to violence or failure. (One is aware of this especially if one lives with “physical disability”, or suffers even an unanticipated moment of it.) But perhaps (InsyaAllah) no vulnerability surpasses the vulnerability of my body in pleasure. I am most vulnerable in love-making or sex, to be blunt about that. For me, the vulnerability of erotic love is vulnerability before God, in the person of my husband/partner. We become witnesses for each other (in love). It requires that we let ourselves be seen (in our utter incapacitation).

“Letting oneself be seen” (whatever that entails) sounds plausibly like the ultimate in vulnerability. But another candidate is “letting oneself be had”.

One can of course “let oneself be seen” in different ways and layers of the self, not requiring orgasm or literal nudity or physical presence or eyesight. I believe in the healing powers of a good cry, with girlfriend, mom or sister, an intimate correspondence in letters, what we here call ngaji, which is patient conversation about spiritual things, etc. But there is something about orgasm, in its special relationship with vulnerability, which it takes and transforms, that the specific experience of pleasure flays the soul wide open, and will fill however much of yourself you can bear to unlock. Tantric meditative practice is a real thing, or the carnal mysticism of Rumi’s poetry, or Plato’s erotic storytelling, for that matter. These describe vividly embodied experiences of vulnerability as access to insight and/or the divine, as God. I would describe Ashtanga yoga practice in these terms, too (lacking the sex, and there’s a whole other topic). Spirituality as a self-studying practice of vulnerability.

In “the valley below”, which is my blog, I may seek the same register of vulnerability, but the embodiment is different, therefore so is the work. Written communications have different dis/abilities than present bodies, different vulnerabilities and strengths, including that, as a writer, one doesn’t know who may be reading. One cannot see the face, smell the breath or the sweat, or grasp the hand of the person to whom one “speaks”. The reader is, possibly or it seems, completely invisible and therefore invulnerable—So I tell you, “you are safe”. This could be one of the principle jobs of a writer, to give a reader the gratification of vulnerability, with none of the risk (a divine sort of privilege). But as most writers know, that’s a lie. Readers are eminently vulnerable. A reader’s vulnerability may not be through the body, but it is there, through the soul, by way of the imagination. By reading, especially with a certain pleasurable naiveté, we open ourselves to wild worlds of deep psychic alter(c)ation. As a writer, I try to be mindful of that vulnerability, while communicating (or, insinuating myself into a “bedroom”) the best that I can.

In writing the blog, I am unsure of my level of vulnerability. The invulnerability of writing would be another divine-seeming and yet dubious privilege. It helps me feel safe that I live “very far away” from almost anybody who would stumble on my blog, and geographic distance plus an ocean around me gives an obvious appearance (or illusion) of safety. It also helps that I wear a mask, that my blog is more-or-less anonymous, that I no longer rely on employment income (or even, strictly speaking, an open-armed welcome) from the country of my birth, my assumption that not many people read the blog, that “helps”, and a calculated guess that even fewer from my local communities, here where I live, will ever read it. Although I am mindful of that possibility (and incidentally, a few interested folks here are, this minute, passing around this piece, translated into Indonesian). I am also mindful of the fact that I live among vulnerable communities, and I care about them dearly. I wish to protect these people and places, whereas exposure (being seen) is enough to destroy many embodied and vulnerable things. So there are certain protections built into my writing, because of this and related (political, legal, privacy) vulnerabilities. “Freedom of speech” is, here, not even a dubious privilege, but an idiomatic slogan that doesn’t apply.

My writing is always trying to describe or share something possibly true, in a vulnerable medium, with a potential reader who is vulnerable, in a vulnerable world, as a vulnerable person, while doing as little harm as I can manage, with unceasing respect for the ever-glimmering unlikelihood of doing (or being) something somewhat good. So the writing is layers of transparent protection, down to the smallest punctuation mark (the liminal crescent of each parenthetical). The work is composed out of metaphorical veils.

One important thing is, I can control every word on this page, in theory. So I have a great deal of control, in the writing, which can make me feel invulnerable (like a magician, or creator god). But every invulnerability of the author becomes a vulnerability of the communication. For example, the fact that I (in my body) am absent from my written words makes them vulnerable to misinterpretation, misunderstanding, or misuse. The meaning of a message (for example, of truth) may not be vulnerable, but the messenger is. I am at constant risk of being taken out of context, (also, server failure), (which is also a euphemism), while at the same time, I find it genuinely difficult to explain my context, in an abbreviated or explicit way (on the blog). And isn’t this difficult, impossible even, for everybody? How can I describe, in a few simple and customary sentences, what I have failed to comprehend fully myself? When it is my life’s work and responsibility not only to understand, but to communicate what is true. To write a few sentences presents context as cut, dry, and known. Like a fact. Whereas, when you know me in my place, you will naturally understand that my context is… infinite. (Reflecting this, I would guess that I’m more vulnerable, as a reader, than I am as a writer. As a reader, I default to generosity.) It is inherently and notoriously difficult to communicate (about) infinite things, in a straightforward way. Anything infinite, as a message, (selves, worlds, justice, beauty, etc., anything divine), becomes vulnerable to the limitations of the messenger.

Another vulnerability of a written communication is its inherent silence.

One might imagine all kinds of monsters, in that silence. And I do feel vulnerable, or afraid of being dismissed or ignored, or of readers who might think I’m (stupid, “cringe”, arrogant, fake, I don’t know, please fill in the blank), or I’m crazy, (which I am, sometimes, and I’ve decided, that’s ok). This is a natural fear for any artist, not just me (or you). I believe that because I read it in The Artist’s Way, which I think is a lovely and therapeutic book, (although I don’t stand behind everything it says, or anything like that), touching on themes of vulnerability in creation, and I recommend it to anyone struggling with “imposter’s syndrome”, or whatever other names for it there are. An artist is chronically vulnerable to those fears, and they can be entirely crippling.

As for my own fear of rejection, I consider that a sort of sacrificial feeling, so I take a knife to it. (Doubtless it’s to my advantage, that I live in a community where ritual offering is public and commonplace, and is always notably at the expense of “business”.) Part of the sacrifice is letting go of the pride that would make me feel humiliated by rejection, or failure, letting the blood drain out of that part of myself (on the hypothesis it’s not an essential part). It helps that I sacrifice it (fear/pride) for something that I experience and acknolwedge as sacred. Whether the sacrifice is delivered in a (or the) name of God, in gratitude as a translator of my teachers, in gratitude as a translator of earth, or whatever the poetry is that day, if there was to be any real or important message in my writing, I wouldn’t consider it my own.

Somewhere in here is the paradoxical in/vulnerability of the fool, who carries the world bundled on their shoulder as they step off a cliff. After decades of writing in a context of fear, to protect my (embodied) professional, social, and political vulnerabilities, I removed my body, (or at least my face), and invited a fool’s energy (back) into my life. And as it turns out, I am altogether happy having nothing to sell. Blogging brings me joy only if I empty it as much as I can of vanity, or an attachment to reward or response, which devolves (for me?) very easily into fear. Most of us (embodied souls) harbor some trauma, here, and I do, too. The feeling of fear or pain can be an indicator of vulnerability, but a reflexive response also stifles access to vulnerability, and all of its fruits. (That’s a yoga lesson, for me, but easy to witness in “everyday life”, including in sex.) Here, there is work to be done, the aforementioned study and effort, and also the sacrifice. Below the pain, I sing to myself, there will be the deepest and easiest pleasure. There will be selflessness, humility, and also liberation in singing for a possibility more remote than the most distant star, which is also a silence, born into the heart of things. That is the kind of vulnerability that I seek, in writing, the in/vulnerability of a (“god-damned”/“blessed”) fool.

Which I understand also as submission to God, and as jihad, in the context of Islam. To me, in my “old life”, this would have sounded like a very strange thing to say, but Islam keeps encouraging the development and practice of my voice. For which my gratitude is… as yet, by me, uncounted. I haven’t reached the end of it. My belief (or my experimental hypothesis, which I also gratefully engage as part of a living lineage, the vastness of which I am still discerning, which is to say, I’m still learning, from the written and living people in my life, as well as from “the trees”) is that tapping the soul’s deepest vulnerability translates its silence into strength.

All the while, a fool has simpler and more superficial incarnations. I enjoy also the nostalgia of being a teenager, pouring her feelings out into a journal, blogging about ruched tube tops, chickens, sexual feelings, or the rain. (“Silly things”.) But this one, here, is no longer a girl. She is rather an emergent crone, and a savvy (if sappy) old bitch, recreating and rediscovering that joy and that sufficiency, in a historical context that will remind her, constantly, just how vulnerable she is. Especially to fear. I guess the joy (if there’s joy) of the blog is also a certain armor. And nobody’s really going to pierce through that. (Are they?)