Risus purus

"Of all the laughs that strictly speaking are not laughs, but modes of ululation, only three I think need detain us, I mean the bitter, the hollow and the mirthless. They correspond to successive… how shall I say successive… suc… successive excoriations of the understanding, and the passage from the one to the other is the passage from the lesser to the greater, from the lower to the higher, from the outer to the inner, from the gross to the fine, from the matter to the form. The laugh that now is mirthless once was hollow, the laugh that once was hollow once was bitter. And the laugh that once was bitter? Eyewater, Mr. Watt, eyewater. But do not let us waste our time with that. . . . The bitter, the hollow and—Haw! Haw!— the mirthless. The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not true! Well well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout—Haw!—so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs—silence please—at that which is unhappy." 

-- Samuel Beckett, "WATT"

A necessary side effect of releasing resentment is welcoming tenderness back. Once you start to get forgiveness in your cells, everything softens up again. The icy pericardium gives way, cracks, shatters. The constriction of the throat and gut relaxes and the muscles are slack enough for sadness. This is at times unwelcome. The reassuring thing about hardness of heart is that it feels familiarly protective and strong. It seems like it has power in it-- protective and tough armor. "I am right, and I know I am right, and I am right about what I know-- and I was wronged, and it is unforgivable. THIS IS THE HILL ON WHICH I WILL DIE."

When the heart softens, especially toward someone who has hurt me, it's disconcerting to realize how fond we can still be toward those who inflict pain on us. How much we can still cherish memories and the experiences and gifts they brought to us. From the standpoint of my ego in its unyielding attempt to protect me from harm, this fondness and nostalgia is a terrible indignity. 

Yet still usually we harden again and end up back in ululation-- laughing the bitter, the hollow and the mirthless laugh- depending. It's oddly reassuring that, no matter how much we may melt back into compassion and mudita toward someone who is dangerous for us and to whom we react as if poisoned, our old reflexes for hatred and self-defense are bound to return. There's no need to put the armor on with any conscious effort. It just grows back around heart and skin and throat and guts as if by magic. Sometimes quite qickly after we have had the most tender and unconditionally loving thoughts. 

I tend to think of experience as linear. It comes as a much less than dignified shock to me when I appear to "make progress" and then experience a stretch of time that feels like "a setback." Yesterday was one of those days. I began in a red rage and journeyed through a wide variety of bizarre emotional states. It was a mad roller coaster, emotionally stormy and unpredictable. My sentimentality and nostalgia arose for a stretch of hours at the most inconvenient time, just before teaching a unit on renal anatomy and physiology in my human anatomy lab section. 

What I am experience now (always) is a labyrinth walk. The magic of the labyrinth is that of course one is headed toward a "goal," that is, the center of the labyrinth. But as one walks, space is folded back on itself in unexpected ways and most labyrinths are designed to throw the walker somehow-- usually by including a far flung ramification near the approach to the center. 

The labyrinth at the First Presbyterian Church of Oklahoma City

Folds in the journey are to be expected but I still find them jarring. Especially when it seems "I am doing worse" on days after I have felt that "I am doing better."

At the intensive study of the book Alcoholics Anonymous that I attend almost every Wednesday, at a church that has a rectilinear labyrinth in the courtyard that I walk while praying to I know not what that is just about every week, the topic came up last night of what the mind can do and where the power of the mind falls short. 

"If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly."

(Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 44-45)

The spectacle of me trying to apply a moral code or philosophy of life as a cure or even a balm against alcoholism is a very unhappy spectacle-- and invites as a result the risus purus. The same is true in regard to my sex and love addiction, my codependency, my addiction to sugar, the form of my absolute hollowness and misery in whatever form it arises, again and again, no matter how much "progress" I make. 

a fascinating show-- 7 being the number of mentally unmanageable multiplicity that yet repeatedly seems like we could master it

I almost sent the following email to the ex yesterday in the midst of my nostalgic melting: "I still can't believe we're not together anymore. It seems to me to be the saddest thing. I am sorry to have failed you and I am sorry we drifted far enough apart that we are now done. I thought I would adventure with you until my heart stopped. I miss you and Everett, the cats and the house, and our life so very much." 

What stopped me was not my pride, or any hardening of the heart or a return of armor. In spite of it being true, or a truth, it seems unhelpful. It is in fact unhelpful. Is it true and is it helpful? Those are two criteria I am endeavoring to abide by-- a moral code of communication. Even so, that moral code never would have been enough to prevent me from sending the email. A power greater than myself intervened and seemed to gently say "That's nice, and kind, and you have a generous heart, but what does such a statement contribute to moving this situation forward? Aren't you also giving away your well being if you send this? Here is a person who is not communicating with you right now-- keep your tenderness and openness and acknowledgement of the gift the experience was, but keep it safer and hold it for people who can also hold it. It's a gift she has no use for or desire for right now, clearly." This is not my own mind working on this absolutely profound pause. The sense is that the ability to pause comes definitely from "outside" myself, from the wisdom of a greater ground than what I am capable of. 

In retrospect it seems worthy of the risus purus-- how a person melting into compassion might immediately think to take that unconditional love to the very person who is repeatedly shitting on it. Haw, haw.