Counters and Alternatives: Jokes and Wisdom

All my friends have like
ideas, half-joking; we're
elder, fools, shamans.

...

I am in a quiet, reflective place. Somewhere between Rochester, Minnesota and my departure for Flagstaff from Lincoln, Nebraska, I came down with a cold. It hushed my voice and dampened my head, but my mind is heavy with magic stories, dream places, the afterthoughts of part-time strangers. I have read through the first 100 issues of Hellblazer (many of which are reread)--the comic of working class sorcerer John Constantine--and am finally jumping into Vurt by Jeff Noon--a drug-addled British cyberpunk Manchester dreamscape. During my travels I listened to Jennifer Eagan's A Visit From the Goon Squad (on Flagstaff to Independence, Kansas) and Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; both of which practice a multiple-perspective, sometimes schizotypal examination of an event, a person, a family, a life. I am struck with a deep appreciation for narrative histories, even of the fictionalized sort. These multi-faceted tellings, these textured explorations of experience, of reality, always seem rooted in a magic of the moment, an understanding that language is brilliant when it points to its failure to share that which is its goal.

In my mind rested but restive mind, these connections are clearer than I will make them. I am entertaining the possibility of Tarot cards. I am intrigued by them in at least two clear ways. First, the tradition of the Tarot represents a way of evaluating and taking in the world that I appreciate even in my inability to understand. Tarot, like alchemy and the I Ching and other alternative wisdom traditions, relates some sort of synchronicity, reflectivity, and/or intertwining of the self with the greater structure, being, and/or perception of the world. Though the logic--a term I use loosely and anachronistically--remains elusive and unclear, the axiom that we are in and of the world is deeply satisfying to me. If in the process of making one's experience more understandable, one also comes to appreciate the world in a novel way, even if it is only through articulating uncertainty and strangeness, then I am captivated. (Note: I am not interested in divination or predictive uses of Tarot; divination, though it has a long tradition, strikes me as a misapprehension of such practices except under specific circumstances.)

Second, Tarot provides a counter-structure to knowledge and knowing compared to the one with which I am "comfortable." The rhetoric(s) of "capitalism" and "democracy"--by which I mean very specific, politically and temporally situated concepts--are deeply troubling. Capitalism has the troubling ability to claim counter-narratives and commodify them. Democracy has been used to validate and valorize the use of violence and the appropriation of public funds for militaristic ends. Theory and practice that go beyond and counter to such stifling structures of knowing are of crucial significance. Despite that, I think it is important to consider how such work may still allow space for hegemonic politics; with that in mind, capitalism and a disempowered democracy can continue to infiltrate such important work.

What strikes me as so important here is that an empowering counter-rhetoric around identity, political economy, spiritual and applied ecology is possible through working with both of these "intrigues" simultaneously. If we are to either deepen or contradict practical, praxical economy and politics, we have the challenge of thinking beyond the boundaries with which we are comfortable. I am not interested in rehabilitating sick institutions or ameliorating their impacts, though I think that those will be intermediate outcomes of such work; rather, I am interested in fostering (also read as "planting," "tending," "preparing") replacement institutions and clearing ("opening up," "contesting," "developing") the space in which such [counter]institutions can dwell. If these are to be both powerful and relatable--something we both want and can do--then they must be rooted in a deeper relationship of the human person to the world. This human person is porous in environmental, social, psychological, intellectual, spiritual, and--in the spirit of these alternative wisdom traditions--cosmic ways. 

So why the haiku? Well, it is derived from a few text messages I sent to my friend Sam Bradley. It seems that all of my friends expect free drinks now that I work at a wine bar, though they only expect in "half-joking" ways. What does this mean? Well, I identify three roles (though there are many more, and synonymous names for these three) in which wisdom and jest are intertwined: the elder, the fool, and the shaman. The elder may chide and condescend, but offers pearls of guidance and truth that the jokes and stories may allow to stick. In oral traditions, the elder (sometimes maternal, sometimes paternal, sometimes both) is the primary individual(s) responsible for passing along stories and histories that communicate personal identity. The fool (when well articulated and not simply the ridiculous or obscene) provides a mirror through which we might see the self or society (as individual; the society: an everyman; the outcast: drunkard; the authority: royalty or the Church; and so on) in insightful ways. It is by providing a foil of the norm, appropriate, or normative that we can see the truth of who and what we are. (This is highlighted by how the fool and the shaman are sometimes analogous in certain cultures, such as some northeastern First Peoples of North America/Turtle Island, though I am not able to be more specific.) And third, though not finally, is the shaman who provides an intermediary between human, ecological, and spiritual worlds. (Note: These are definitely overlapping and co-constitutive categories for many if not most cultures; how they exist as such, though requires specific and sympathetic analysis.) The shaman demonstrates knowledge in counterintuitive ways to the cultural norm, though such practice is validated by the in-betweenness that such roles explore. Plants', animals', and places' spiritual significance may be identified through medicinal use or magical qualities. Shamans provide insight into the experiences of spirits, places, animals, and plants that support the well-being of the community even if the reasons did not fit with the understanding of the community, such as by "listening" to waterways and precipitation or--as Aldo Leopold puts it--"thinking like a mountain" to appreciate the relationship between wolves, mule-deer, and the mountains.

If I want to take these roles and insights seriously, it means stepping beyond normative behavior. It means exploring and dwelling in the in-betweenness where the shaman finds tense, dynamic, and insightful home. I think of Slavoj Zizec, whose uncouth enthusiasm and diction makes him a sort of jester in the court of political theory, in the theatre of theory, as it were. He crosses the edges of the socio-cultural norm (where trash and human waste go, the analysis of gender and perversion in film, the demarcation of imagination in the political) to show us the rather narrow limits of our society, politics, and psychology. I work hard to appreciate the wisdom that I do not understand from others, but the practice of it strikes me as absurd or nonsensical. It is important to me to break such habits and I know of no clearer way than to practice counter-habits.

...

And as an afterthought, I plan on writing for this specifically (reflections, essays, poetry, etc.) at least once a week.