It Isn't Incomprehension, but rather Disbelief....

Much revolving, I have called Wendy, daughter of Bill Weaver, twice in the last ten days, and tried, and tried, to get her to talk the thing out with me.  She says she likes talking with me, and she does her best to answer specific questions, like "What is 'power'?  Why can't I understand what other people mean by 'power'?  What pleasure is there in submitting to another human being? What pleasure is there in pain?  What pleasure is there in helplessness?  What pleasure is there in dominating another human being?  What pleasure is there in hurting another human being?   Why aren't Dominant/submissive's as appalled as I am at the very idea of relating to other human beings on terms of inequality?  Why isn't everybody as sickened as I am at the very notion of "punishment"? Why isn't everybody as totally sold as I am on the ideal-reality of social and moral equality as the basis of all civilized, and every other sort of, intercourse?"  But curiously, she talks nonsense back at me--non-sequiturs, specious absurdities--things, I can tell, she thinks I want to hear.  And after all, she's doing me the honor of talking to me: I can scarcely be so rude as to say, "Wendy, why are you talking out of your ass at me?"  

But at least, from the odd inconsequence, strange temporizing, and seizing on what I have just said and feeding it back to me as if I were a hopeless solipsist, I gather that Wendy is telling me something obvious, to her, about me--It isn't the focus of my mind that's wrong, it's my inability to unfocus.   Bill her father often said something like that about me.  When I asked, "Why do I feel that I'm on the outside looking in?"  she batted that right back across the net, saying, "Don't you see? That is power--always having an outside referent.  People who are in the one-up/one-down position are totally subjective, totally powerless."  Well, that makes a kind of sense.

So, being, if not "content not to know," at least not insisting on its being resolved right away, I checked out three books from the state library on the Impotent Grand Progenitor of all Modern Unreason, Michel Foucault.  Not, I hasten to say, anything written by Foucault himself, but three books about him and the tedious nonsense of his "works."  As I patiently began reading The Cambridge Companion to Foucault--well, maybe not so patiently; maybe in fact (though metaphorically) holding my nose and reading at arm's length--I came early upon this signal instance of what at first appeared "difficult" or "obscure," until I realized that it wasn't a failure of my understanding, but rather, my refusal, for cause, to accept or believe it:  "...orthodox (what a wealth of ignorant disdain in that simple adjective!) historians..have every right to refute Foucault's general claims about...the status of the mad in eighteenth-century Europe or the fundamental mentality of the Classical Age.  But even if, read as standard (once again the sly, dismissive cavil!) history, his accounts are found inaccurate, they may still be adequate to the their task of grounding a historical critique of current malpractices."  Oh?  Prithee, how is that?  What if I should say, "No, they're not.  Inaccurate accounts can 'ground' nothing adequately.  Whatever such a critique might be, it can't be called 'historical'"?  And that is what I do say.  

And of a similar nature is my "failure to understand" the "difficult notions" of Dominance/submission and Sadomasochism:  There's really nothing in it, after all, that I'm having the least trouble understanding; but rather, several superficially, imagistically connected, half-thought-through, wishful absurdities of the sort affected by snobs, cowards and scoundrels, that I can plainly and unerringly identify, and which, as easily as I draw breath, I abominate, disdain and disbelieve. Ultimately, moreover, my beautiful inner, rational, reponsible, emotional Transcendental Self is never in the least burthensome to me; never, ever, even as I approach the limits of this life (as I have done, not too long ago, when I had a nearly terminal case of bacterial pneumonia) does it fail me, inhibit me, make me wish that someone else had my "reins" in hand, or prevent my feeling what I feel with a pall of "thought, sicklied o'er."  And as for pain:

Pain is my friend.

He lets me know

What's wrong--He's what's

Wrong.  But at least

He lets me know.

Himself one Vanilla Antithesis

And, God's truth, I understand not a word or a particle of what I've just written.  "Power"?  "The pleasure of pleasing"?  "Endorphins"?  "Pain as Pleasure"?--Well, maybe.  But helplessness? Tedious discomfort?  Humiliation?   What the hell?!   Who are the monsters so constituted as to find any of the foregoing interesting, much less exciting?  And "power"--What-ever the fuck does it mean?

Now the Master Up, Now the (sub) Miss

Funny how I've floated through this life, close up to the likely 70-year end of it, and utterly failed to grasp that my take on it (life), and the understanding that most of my fellow humans have of it is somehow totally dissimilar; so much so that I have to say that, in some very important matters, I don't understand my fellows at all.  This has become increasingly evident to me as I have delved deeper and deeper into Dominance/submission/Masochism/Sadism.  I have read by now quite a few serious philosophical, as well as pornographic, expositions of this perplexing subject--I have even watched (tried to watch) pornographic movies about it--and, in the end I have to say:  I don't get it.  But a huge percentage--maybe 85%--of my fellow creatures, unlike me, have no difficulty whatever with its basic premises: 

 Most human relations are about (1) "power." (2)  Most people would like to relinquish their "power," and give it over to a "skillful" (3) Dom or Domme, who will inflict (4) measured, agreed-upon amounts of pain, discomfort and humiliation upon them, thus enabling them to feel the pleasure of "endorphins" (5) and, not least, the pleasure of pleasing (6) their cruel/caring Master/Mistress, and (7) to lose the burdensome consciousness of themselves as responsible, inner, individual, emotional, reflective selves.  

 

Murmansk's Gorgeous Garages -- A Misogynist Subculture

The men of Russia's city of Murmansk have an unlikely passion -- as a woman living there explains:  "Many men in Murmansk love escaping to their garages, which are often built far away from the apartment blocks where they live."

"It is a tradition that the men build the garages themselves.  Many of them were illegally built, though a few months ago there was an amnesty for unregistered garages."

"They call them sea shells.  I don't know why because they are so ugly and sea shells are so pretty."

"Winters are long and hard and they've got to keep their cars somewhere.  They like to mend their cars in a warm place, and the fishermen can lock up their cars when they spend months at sea."

"The men spend a lot of time there, repairing their cars and talking politics or gossiping."

"When a car has been repaired they celebrate.  It is a tradition to eat home-made pickles and drink vodka, so in most garages there is a good store of supplies."

"the garages are often furnished with old furniture, so after bad rows with their wives the men can come here to stay for a few days."

"Many of the garages have wood burners, some even have saunas."

"From time to time there is a fire, and when that happens it can spread fast since there is so much paint and chemicals stored here."

"It is strange that behind all these doors, inside all these garages without windows, there is so much going on, like it's a secret society."

Text and photos: Jorn Madslien, in conversation with one of Murmansk's many mystified women