ghosts & admissons

"Staring at the setting sun there's no reason to look back again..."

I got in what I would call an "important discussion" today with my parents. A few hours later my Mom called to see if I was all right or if I felt she was too hard on me. To be honest I barely noticed, that's not to say I didn't recognize her points or anything, its just it didn't upset me in the slightest. It was apparent she thought it was a fight or at least an argument. So now I wonder am I that detached.

A year in politics has certainly toughened me up. I have to deal with high stress and confrontation all the time. By now I feel that I'm pretty adept at dealing with it to the point that nothing really phases me. Just this summer I stood in a park in Toronto staring at a beautiful girl who I admire and respect. I stared right into her eyes as she told me "You don't care, you only care that you got caught!" The sad thing is that it's partly true. I mean I feel for her, I understand her complaint and see how I'm wrong. I learn from my mistakes but don't change my behaviour. That's a hard thing to realize.

It's weird, now when my skin is it's thickest and I'm able to levy a fair amount of callous indifference, that's when I feel the most. I'm not devoid of emotion or absent of compassion, although I know some people believe that to be the case. The truth is that I empathize with people more than ever, I'm more emotional than ever. I breath deep when I hug a woman, I smell her hair, and I try to formulate blog posts in my head that would truly capture the essence of this embrace. All really corny stuff but I love it. Yet the rational part of me limits these feelings and the resulting expression more often than not is relatively uninspiring.

Immanuel Kant says I'm living wrong, and that an appetite for anything without offering the same amount of yourself is exploitation. In fact he argues it's impossible to offer but a piece of yourself or enjoy or consume a piece of another because humans are "a unity" and can’t be divided. Thus my actions are immoral.

Feeling this way surely isn't, for all my activities (consumption) are not sexual. And perhaps that's where the confusion lies. I'm constantly being made to feel guilty for misleading people or making the same mistakes, when in all honesty my appetite is merely to be consumed myself. I'm kind of just figuring this out as I write this now.

I guess somewhere between neglect and abuse, the two extremes of attention, lies something that I've been missing. In past relationships I've had a long history of both, and in both cases it could be argued that I was the one being objectified, and perhaps that's what I miss. Is this sick? That I revel in a absence of adherence to a categorical imperative that people should treat others the way they would like to be treated themselves?

Is this the legacy of my ex girlfriend? Am I still in love with her? Is the fact that I enjoy consuming others hostilities then put me in violation of the same categorical imperative, and Kant would yet again find me guilty?

BTW if you google "cum fater" I'm the first thing that come up....

posted by El Chupacabra @ 12:23 AM