Confession

July 27, 2008

The only time I have had a "spiritual" experience was when, about 20 years ago (or perhaps 15, I prefer to exaggerate) I found out that I was gay. Or rather that I was making myself gay.

The experience was in retrospect 'spiritual'. It certainly was not carnal: there was no sex act involved. It was certainly insane, crazy, out of this world. I 'lost my marbles'. At the time I said that sort of thing to myself; ' You have lost your marbles Tim'. But at the same time, like many people who are deemed 'insane' it seemed to me truer than the existance that I was supposed to live then, and indeed the one that I live now.

I was about 21 and entering society for the first time, working for a weapons manufacturer in the UK. I did not like my job. I read Nietzsche and Camus and wondered about 'the meaning of life.' I wrote a diary about my musings on the meaning of life and, generally, how meaningless life seemed to me.

And then one day when I was reading through my diary, it was as if the narrator caught up with him or herself (like "the drums in the deep" in scene in Balin's tomb of the "Lord of the Rings", or the end of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" By Gabriel Garcia Marquez).

And I had an experience where, it seemed to me, that the person that I always thought I am, indeed the person that I think I am now, was (is) but *a pupet made of words*. I found myself to be a ventriloquist that is identifying with his "dummy" (like "Magic" by William Goldman). I was (am) that "dummy" or puppet.

It seemed to me in a flash, that the person that I normally think is me, is nothing more than the hero of a novel. The heros of novels do not exist. I think that I exist. But all the while I am only the presumed subject of a narrative that 'I' speak 'to myself.'

But *not* to myself. Normally, when I say "What the heck are you doing posting this to your blog?" I think that I am talking to the same person that I think is doing the speaking - myself.

I am under the illusion not only that the enunciator is the enunciated (I am the one who speaks,
rather than something else is speak of me), but also that the listener is the same as as the
speaker (enuciator) and spoken of (enunciated).

In that flash I realised that I was "talking off", that is to say that I was talking deliberately to be
overheard. Any what a thing I was overheard by...I was in the presence of something far bigger than little puppet me, a giant, a vast, true-me of immesurable proportions. That true me was (is!) male. But I was speaking "off" to it, itself, *as if it were a woman*. Particularly as if it were my own 'pet mother'.

When a child is lonely what does it do? Children often play with dolls or teddy bears. They cuddle their teddy bear, their doll. That is a strange behaviour in a sense because they are not asking teddy to cuddle them. One never or rarely sees a child trying to get the doll or teddy bear to hold it, the child, in its arms.Instead they hold the bear. They hug the bear to their chest and comfort it, even though it is they, the comforter that needs to be comforted. It is strange, in a sense, that there is not much of a demand for giant teddy bears. (Sort of "dutch mothers"?)

It seemed to me that I am a lonely child that has made a teddy bear, that is myself. I cuddle it. Or rather it myself I speak, and speaks, and demands to be cuddled. In that empty space of my consciousness a puppet or teddy bear made of words, creates itself or is created, so that it can be comforted. And creates a or permiates an atmosphere of a mother to comfort it. And all the while a faceless giant looks and listens on.

The realisation was sparked off by the realisation of my homosexuality. The puppet made of words insisted upon speaking 'off' to someone that would love it unconditionally, like a mother. I realised in that flash that I was making my giant, true-self into a woman. I was speaking 'off' to my true self as if that true self were a woman. In that realisation, I realised the game I was playing. I realised that I was making a woman of my giant self.

That this was why I was (am) homosexual. It was also the end of my homosexuality.

I realised that my giant self wanted a sort of obliteration. It wanted to end the charade.It wanted to stop having to listen to these moans and wimperings of a perpetual mummys boy and be, to put it politely, 'made love to.'

I am not sure if women want that. I am not sure if there is a "little death" (petit mort) for men or women at all. But that is what I felt I　wanted.

There is a tripartite relationship.

A giant man in drag holding a puppet made of words.
The woman that giant man is (by being in drag) pretending to be
The person that I am, the puppet, that thinks he speaks, and by speaking in a whining, way creates the woman, the veneer of "drag" (make up?! a wig?) on the giant.

All there "really" is, is the 'giant man-in-drag-holding-a-puppet-made-of-words'. But in my day to day life I am the puppet. I wonder if I still speak in such a way as to make the giant listen with a mother' ear, and make the giant wear womens clothes. I don't know.

I don't do homosexuality but, the experience, it was as true to me as the screen I see. It was truer than me as I still am.

Ahmen