Spitting Mad
3/28/06
I'm angry. Not the fuming, lashing out kind of ire, but slow smouldering fire that flares up now and again. It makes me want to eat, to stuff it back down, to drown out that horumuncula who insists on dancing on my nice, neat little presumptions, kicking me now and then for attention. Thank goodness the dry kindling usually lies safe from sparks and I don't have to carry around water buckets. But today I need a hose.
How convenient that we live in a culture filled with fire extinguishers: food, alcohol, sex, drugs, rock and roll, internet surfing, gambling, television. Even now, I'm using my favorite tool, writing, to difuse and redirect little Ms. Lily B Doe. And I pat myself on the back that at least it's a no-calorie, harmless, perhaps even creative way to handle something bigger than I want to deal with at the moment.
When we say we're spitting mad, like the dragon whose breath torches all in its path, what is that imagery? Are we trying to put out a fire with our saliva? How ineffectual. Or is it that our anger is so frothy we can't contain it. We say "suck it up" when we want someone to just hold their own anger, or "eat me" when we're blistering angry at someone, or "suck my dick" to put another down. All oral references to swallowing rage. We use our mouths to eat, to take in, but also to speak, to put out. Are we as a nation becoming an obese, inebriated, toking blob partly because we're so fucking angry about so many unkown or un-namable things? Why don't we use that very same organ of surpression to release? We get taught so early to control our anger, to "stuff it", especially girls, because it's not pretty. But it's powerful and that power can change the world. Maybe that's why.
Why are we so angry? At whom? For what? When we want to ram the car in front of us, is it the slow-witted driver we're pissed at or ourselves for not taking the extra 5 minutes we need to get to our destination in time? If we feel deprived of some right are we angry at the power wielder or ourselves for not wresting our due to our chest? When we are wronged by someone is it truely they we rail at, our the system that denied them their opportunities so that they chose to rob us of ours instead?
What if we took the time to scream into the night, like the wolf that lives within. Would that quench this appetite that never seems sated, a fire that will always burn? Would that relieve the building pressure, the urge to lash out and hurt people around us like so many postmen and adolescent goths? They say depression is anger turned inward so then are 20% of the population pissed as hell but continue to keep taking it? Where do you put this stuff if you can't contain it? Maykbe we could convert one of those wandering garbage barges to a huge "roving rage receptacle," perhaps hand out baseball bats and assign each a car in need of demolition. Japan has yelling competitions (but also laughing ones as well); we were once counseled to access and release our primal scream until studies proved it wasn't that good an idea after all. I'm not so sure. If it gets surpressed and sublimated, it will out itself somehow, somewhere. Maybe a series of spittoons on each corner where we can, with regularity, release that wild thing within. And then walk on, lighter, to turn our faces towards the sun again.
I'm angry. Not the fuming, lashing out kind of ire, but slow smouldering fire that flares up now and again. It makes me want to eat, to stuff it back down, to drown out that horumuncula who insists on dancing on my nice, neat little presumptions, kicking me now and then for attention. Thank goodness the dry kindling usually lies safe from sparks and I don't have to carry around water buckets. But today I need a hose.
How convenient that we live in a culture filled with fire extinguishers: food, alcohol, sex, drugs, rock and roll, internet surfing, gambling, television. Even now, I'm using my favorite tool, writing, to difuse and redirect little Ms. Lily B Doe. And I pat myself on the back that at least it's a no-calorie, harmless, perhaps even creative way to handle something bigger than I want to deal with at the moment.
When we say we're spitting mad, like the dragon whose breath torches all in its path, what is that imagery? Are we trying to put out a fire with our saliva? How ineffectual. Or is it that our anger is so frothy we can't contain it. We say "suck it up" when we want someone to just hold their own anger, or "eat me" when we're blistering angry at someone, or "suck my dick" to put another down. All oral references to swallowing rage. We use our mouths to eat, to take in, but also to speak, to put out. Are we as a nation becoming an obese, inebriated, toking blob partly because we're so fucking angry about so many unkown or un-namable things? Why don't we use that very same organ of surpression to release? We get taught so early to control our anger, to "stuff it", especially girls, because it's not pretty. But it's powerful and that power can change the world. Maybe that's why.
Why are we so angry? At whom? For what? When we want to ram the car in front of us, is it the slow-witted driver we're pissed at or ourselves for not taking the extra 5 minutes we need to get to our destination in time? If we feel deprived of some right are we angry at the power wielder or ourselves for not wresting our due to our chest? When we are wronged by someone is it truely they we rail at, our the system that denied them their opportunities so that they chose to rob us of ours instead?
What if we took the time to scream into the night, like the wolf that lives within. Would that quench this appetite that never seems sated, a fire that will always burn? Would that relieve the building pressure, the urge to lash out and hurt people around us like so many postmen and adolescent goths? They say depression is anger turned inward so then are 20% of the population pissed as hell but continue to keep taking it? Where do you put this stuff if you can't contain it? Maykbe we could convert one of those wandering garbage barges to a huge "roving rage receptacle," perhaps hand out baseball bats and assign each a car in need of demolition. Japan has yelling competitions (but also laughing ones as well); we were once counseled to access and release our primal scream until studies proved it wasn't that good an idea after all. I'm not so sure. If it gets surpressed and sublimated, it will out itself somehow, somewhere. Maybe a series of spittoons on each corner where we can, with regularity, release that wild thing within. And then walk on, lighter, to turn our faces towards the sun again.
posted by Barbery at 7:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home