The Tree of Knowledge
Again I find myself sharing here what I wrote to a friend of mine in an email a little while ago.
I told her of my plans for the weekend, a trip to my favorite city, Montreal, for a weekend of debauchery during a cyber-porn convention (did I mention I get weird conference invitations?).
Sounds glamorously wicked, hmm? Not really. This will be my second visit to one of the events in as little as one month, and I must say the "glamor" of the business end of naughtiness proved far less thrilling than about which one might fantasize. As I said to friend, it was much more "convention" than porn. Lots of small booths, shop talk about billing systems, some skin on display but again, this is a for-profit enterprise. So yes, campers, I will have attended two porn conventions in one month. Chalk that onto the Resume We Cannot Show No One. That's getting to be a fun read, I'll have to publish it here someday.
The funny part is, when you walk behind those closed doors, and see it all going down, you cannot help but be struck by its...banality. This I have found is a common theme in my many walks on the wild side. So many of us believe in angels and demons and petty, cruel deities playing dice with our lives. As I have gained experience in these matters, I realize more and more that there no demons in the dark, no angels in the sky. There's just people, having good days and bad days. I feel I know a little now of how the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge must have tasted; it is knowing the real over living in fantasy. Perhaps that is the fate of we knowledge seekers, and who says it has to be foreboding?
What I fear more than the castaways from Paradise are those who assure us that if we only expunge the grey areas, the contrast of Black and White will grant us somehow the purity to re-enter Eden. We can be free again, blissful in our ignorance again! Of course, this is all so much piffle from someone selling us something. There is no way back.
The gates of ignorant Eden are shut forever, and in a way, might that not be the point of the story? Perhaps the whole of the Eden story was not a fable of another time...but an allegory of the experience every human takes as they approach adulthood. The petty narcissim of childhood gives way to confused adolescence, and from the pain and confusion stumble young adults, unsure of their place in their world and reeling from the death of many happy, distracting illusions. They find they have only each other in this world. It's a love story, really. among people who've moved past pretenses of patriarchal omnipotence and the gilded fantasy cage of a perfect world.
Maybe that was the lesson we're supposed to take away, and yet how many simply come away with fear? Fear of God? Fear of snakes? Fear of snakes on a goddam...oh nevermind.
It's hard to package love. It's easy to package fear. Why don't we have a color coded system for kindness and respect? Hey folks, it's a Periwinkle Alert Day! Don't forget to try and overcome a deeply held prejudice today! Oops, looks like a Puce Alert Day tomorrow! How about not taking so much of the world for yourself and giving a little to someone worse off than you?
I know...ain't gonna happen. So, until that day, I'll be just fine over here on the outskirts of sanity and morality with a bunch of happy sinners who don't need speaking serpents to tell them that the world's a happily fucked up little ball of smile and tears with not a shred of sense to it.
Enjoy your day.
Again I find myself sharing here what I wrote to a friend of mine in an email a little while ago.
I told her of my plans for the weekend, a trip to my favorite city, Montreal, for a weekend of debauchery during a cyber-porn convention (did I mention I get weird conference invitations?).
Sounds glamorously wicked, hmm? Not really. This will be my second visit to one of the events in as little as one month, and I must say the "glamor" of the business end of naughtiness proved far less thrilling than about which one might fantasize. As I said to friend, it was much more "convention" than porn. Lots of small booths, shop talk about billing systems, some skin on display but again, this is a for-profit enterprise. So yes, campers, I will have attended two porn conventions in one month. Chalk that onto the Resume We Cannot Show No One. That's getting to be a fun read, I'll have to publish it here someday.
The funny part is, when you walk behind those closed doors, and see it all going down, you cannot help but be struck by its...banality. This I have found is a common theme in my many walks on the wild side. So many of us believe in angels and demons and petty, cruel deities playing dice with our lives. As I have gained experience in these matters, I realize more and more that there no demons in the dark, no angels in the sky. There's just people, having good days and bad days. I feel I know a little now of how the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge must have tasted; it is knowing the real over living in fantasy. Perhaps that is the fate of we knowledge seekers, and who says it has to be foreboding?
What I fear more than the castaways from Paradise are those who assure us that if we only expunge the grey areas, the contrast of Black and White will grant us somehow the purity to re-enter Eden. We can be free again, blissful in our ignorance again! Of course, this is all so much piffle from someone selling us something. There is no way back.
The gates of ignorant Eden are shut forever, and in a way, might that not be the point of the story? Perhaps the whole of the Eden story was not a fable of another time...but an allegory of the experience every human takes as they approach adulthood. The petty narcissim of childhood gives way to confused adolescence, and from the pain and confusion stumble young adults, unsure of their place in their world and reeling from the death of many happy, distracting illusions. They find they have only each other in this world. It's a love story, really. among people who've moved past pretenses of patriarchal omnipotence and the gilded fantasy cage of a perfect world.
Maybe that was the lesson we're supposed to take away, and yet how many simply come away with fear? Fear of God? Fear of snakes? Fear of snakes on a goddam...oh nevermind.
It's hard to package love. It's easy to package fear. Why don't we have a color coded system for kindness and respect? Hey folks, it's a Periwinkle Alert Day! Don't forget to try and overcome a deeply held prejudice today! Oops, looks like a Puce Alert Day tomorrow! How about not taking so much of the world for yourself and giving a little to someone worse off than you?
I know...ain't gonna happen. So, until that day, I'll be just fine over here on the outskirts of sanity and morality with a bunch of happy sinners who don't need speaking serpents to tell them that the world's a happily fucked up little ball of smile and tears with not a shred of sense to it.
Enjoy your day.
posted by Javaris at
1:47 PM
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