"If the only way we can maintain relationships is by not showing what we are feeling or not saying what we are really thinking, then we end up giving up relationships for the sake of having relationships. The absurdity of this, when you think about it, is countered by the fact that we often accept it as inevitable. And I think this is one reason why many people are unhappy in love, because what is said to be love often feels like constraint. Love relationships in our society are shadowed by the legacy of a loss that has its roots in childhood. Because this loss is often experienced as a loss of voice and connected with a feeling of being unable to speak or to say what is happening, it bears the hallmarks of trauma. One way to get around this trauma within the confines of a patriarchal society is to break this silence. The fact that more women and men are now speaking openly about what is happening or has happened in their intimate relationships is one clear sign that we are moving out of patriarchy."

Yes, I think Chris Locke is a genius. He's also a real person, brave, willing to live in public, show us how he loves, how he cares, how far the knife has to go in before he bleeds. Sometimes it's so lovely, and sometimes it's so excruciating, and the only thing we can do for each other, as some of the two million bloggers-now-friends dotting this planet, is to be there, wrap our minds and hearts around problems and joys together, and from that, grow.

Chris,

If I said that you said that the best thing the Dalai Lama could do for the world right now is to give Eminem a blowjob, well... I'm not sure whose interests would be served. And since I have a vision of a kinder, gentler Chris Locke strewing forget-me-nots and buttercups in the paths of cyber-seekers everywhere, I think I'll leave it out.

In the introduction, which is all I generally ever read of these things, if that, even after sqaundering the 25 bucks, which I did, the author tells a charming story. It seems that Alfred Schopenhauer (1788-1860), by all accounts, an all-around hateful uphocking of subhuman phlegm, wrote a little vignette about porcupines based on horribly corrupted translations of Vedic and Buddhist texts, on which he in turn based his hugely influential and oddly popular philosphy of constipated pessimism and total despair. Total, that is, except for Art. What the fuck is it with these people and Art? But that's not part of the story. [more...]