Civil Disobedience in a Slave Girl (An Interlude)

Harriet Jacobs was a slave.  One cannot question the fact without questioning the validity of history's say-so in her life.  However, she kept a very specific part of her that leads me to believe, as I usually do, that slavery for Ms. Jacobs was not a simple, cut-and-dry process that stripped her of all freedoms and choice.  On the contrary, I think she rightfully tried to take what was hers already, and made the choice to not sit by and remain a slave.  Slavery, ladies and gentlemen, is both a choice and a punishment.

First...the punishment.  One does not choose to want to be a slave, certainly one does not choose to work the sugar canes, or the master's home, to be whipped and chained, to be spat on, to be berated, to be branded...none of these things we choose even at our most masochistic, at our most sadistic.  All of this is thrown upon us by the "greater" forces (i.e. the White Man) we cannot stop or hold back.  To make matters worse for Ms. Jacobs, her slavery took on different facets...it wasn't just relegated to the work.  Mr. Sands, the father of her children, is the owner of her body, whether or not she understands it or not.  Dr. Flint is the master of her living, both daily and otherwise.  His wife, Mrs. Flint, is the tormentor of her mind, there to make sure she does not rest, does not have one easy moment coming.  Slavery for her is, in a twisted, unbearable manner, the key for her survival...it is through these obstacles, these impossible No's, that Ms. Jacobs is able to confront herself and say Yes, above all things, say Yes!

But what was she saying yes to?  Her freedom?  Or something less tangible?  I believe she was saying Yes to herself, independent of her body, independent of her spirit, both in a state of broken repair, both subject to cruelty and despair.  But Ms. Jacobs took hold of her own choices, and in doing so, ceased to be a slave.  Ceased to let that be a punishment.  She was still bound to her master, still bound to the punishment, but neither he nor it could fully overcome her now, neither could claim they knew or had her in their independent (and collective) grasps.  Since she recognized herself as a human being, since she could see the paradox of being a slave and being a free thinker, it is of no great coincidence that it is in Henry David Thoreau where we can look to truly dip our hands into the waters of not only slavery in Early America, but the consequences of this barbarism on Ms. Jacobs's society then...and now.  In her way, Ms. Jacobs was a poster child for the ever-relevant Civil Disobedience.

Had Ms. Jacobs been a free woman (though she was in her mind, she remained shackled otherwise) she would have been a staunch observer and supporter of Thoreau's claim that it is in our government where we must put our faith...and yet, not the American Government, not the one established during her time, during Thoreau's time.  Being primarily an agent of corruption and injustice, this American Idea of Democracy had, for all intensive purposes, failed in promising the most important ideal for all humans on Earth: the right to reign free.  How can the government stand for something and then allow something contradictory to continue to happen?  This central contradiction is what drives Ms. Jacobs and Thoreau, what pushes them both to the boundaries of their own thinking and believing...to really take a stand and say, NO, I will not let you lead me astray.  Strong of will and strong of spirit, the both of them learned how to keep the demons at bay (whether they be your Master or Law, it doesn't matter) and fight, always FIGHT, for what was always rightfully theirs.  See, Civil Disobedience is just another phrase for Being Free.

Ms. Jacobs should be commended for keeping herself pure from the influences of the evils that tried to tie her down.  She should be commended for daring to be liberated even as a slave girl.  She should be commended, if only simply, because she deigned to be something greater than what America tried to make of her...then what she knew.

To Thine Own Self Be True: Between the Selfish Heart and the Selfish Mind (A Self-Reliant Rant)

I am a self-actualized man.  Or boy, depending on the day.  And why is this so?  As all things with life, if one pays enough attention...I was forced into self-actualization by circumstance.

When I boarded the plane from Havana to Miami, October 1995...it took me an additional two years, on another plane, back to Cuba, from Miami...to realize the great irony that my life had just planted at my feet.  It was in that moment that I, unconsciously and consciously, understood what it was to say hello and goodbye in the very same breath.  It was then that I began to plant my feet firmly in the realm of self-reliance.  It took me, I'd say, fourteen more years to come to this point, and say, without a doubt...I still do not know who I am, but I know, always now, that I am the only one I need to survive in the world.  This is not a selfish quest we're on, but one that is incredibly harder to define (and gets harder and harder with each year, it seems).  My friends, my brothers, my family...they are all in me too, yes...and being together is a great pleasure and a great privilege.  One I take so seriously it even sometimes gets in the way of everything else.  But they can never bring me down, and nor can I ever impose my own life on them.  This is Emerson's plea...we must listen to our hearts first and foremost, because THAT is how we can listen to another's, that is how we can love.

I have been ready to say my goodbyes since the first hellos.  This is the way it’s always been for me, and I hazard a guess…the way it’ll always be for everyone else, whether they realize it or not.  The problem with connecting, with that desire to know another, to love another, is that it always passes, travels from person to person, emotion to emotion, and never settles into anything but the transient being it creates between two people, the invisible third hand or foot that allows you to keep the memories, allows you to remember how someone’s eyes looked when cast against dusk, how someone’s words hurt you too much to imagine, how you saw them last, or for the first time.  All we are left with, in the end, are the traces of the people we’ve left behind, the people that have left US behind.  Self-reliance, then, is an act of selflessness.  It’s a protection against one of life’s harshest inevitabilities…we all must end up alone in order to face ourselves.  Emerson says, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.”  That's precisely what we keep if we don't let ourselves be carried by our own regrets, by our own attempts at salvaging and recovering what does not want to be saved or recovered.  If time is cruel, we are crueler still to believe we can do anything to stop it, or to make it run any slower.

And what is this integrity of mind?  For me, it's keeping very clear that we must rule ourselves FIRST, and we must do what is RIGHT for us above everything else.  This is not meant to be a selfish decision, but one of self-preservation, as said before, because no matter how many people surround us today, they can do nothing in the acts of our lives except watch and spew wisdom, what little of it remains in the world to spew.  My best friend can no more rule my life than my best enemy...it's up to me, and no one else.  This is why Emerson so crucially points that it is in the saving of our mind's purity, of its individuality, of its First Thought, where we save our own lives.  Emerson continues his thought by stating, "What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think."  It's just another form of independence...and if we are to follow others, if we really are meant to not have Original Thinking in life...then we would not die as ourselves, but as everyone else.  We would perish more alone than if we were to face solitude in the face.  It must, MUST be true then, that the only choice available to us is that of keeping our paths separate from another's, even when we walk it together, even when we share common ends, or beginnings.  Man is an island, even when no man is an island.  After all, "the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

Not quite the perfect setup, but one of Emerson's most important points for me, and one of the most controversial I reckon, is his idea that "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," a statement which I happen to agree with.  We couldn't possibly hold ourselves to consistency...and how could we, living in a world full of contradictions, and paradox, and unknowns?  To live correctly, one must only look to the Self, and ask: Am I following you right?  Here in America especially it's considered a sign of fantastic character if one is reliable, punctual, and, to be blunt about it...a little dull.  The excitement of spontaneity, of not knowing what one wants at all hours of the day...all of that is looked down upon, ESPECIALLY in the world of our work, the most essential to our survival.  One could argue (and rationalize) this is so in order to avoid misunderstandings, to avoid problems of conflicting ideas and personalities...to keep, as Kanye West says, our love locked down.  Such a shame, then, to give up one's rights to never be pinned down to a personality trait, or a characteristic of mind, or a stereotype...a true shame, that the greatest work we will ever undertake, the work of Identity, is always the one most undermined by the Society in which it's meant to survive.

Let's not misunderstand, either!  Emerson isn't saying it's okay to be a flake, or to be unreliable, to live, as it were, on the whims of a day...no, he's merely saying that we cannot tie ourselves down to who we think we are, because, in the long run of our existence, who we think we are is an ever-changing cycle of emotions, wants, irrationalities...namely, everything that makes up the map of the world is also in us, and with that in mind: how can we possibly ask for anything even resembling continuity or absolutes?  Even more to Emerson's point, is that there's an inherent sadness, an inherent impossibility, in what he is asking his readers to do.  As he points out, "Discontent is the want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will."  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our lives, as they are.  I'm not entirely sure, though, that Emerson was unaware of the Catch-22 being presented...in fact, I think that's precisely more the reason to bring it up, to introduce it to the world...because THAT is how we grow and how we deal with not only self-reliance, and how to attain it, but also how to release people from our grips, how to release ourselves from theirs...how to stand alone, and know it not as a punishment, but as a right, and as a a gift.

That's all for now, folks, but let me leave you with this:

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men...that is genius."

Thanks for reading, and see you all next week.

I apologize beforehand for the spoilers within the clip, but I cannot imagine a more fitting tribute to self-actualization (AND the bittersweetness of it) than this glorious grace note from Harold and Maude.  Enjoy, and remember...

To Let Go

In This House of Mirth, We Shall Be Free: Injustices of Choice in Captivity (A Rant for a Lost Coquette)

The choice between Boyer and Sanford isn't necessarily a new one, even for Eliza Wharton.  It's a mythical, age-old decision, spanning quite possibly the entire world, for it hits one of the foundational structures of our lives, or rather, our lives as manufactured by society: choosing Right.

What that means, to be honest, I still don't know, because it demands of all of us the supposition that Right is, in fact, a universal truth, when we all know it's not, being one of the most important subjective ideals we carry inside ourselves.  Eliza was trapped, as all women of this age were, trapped because not only had they not yet truly begun to acquire their rights, but because, in reality, men hadn't really come around to the idea that they had any rights to begin with, thereby sealing them in this space of supposed-to and of rightful conduct, never once explaining or justifying why these things had to be so.

All of this, of course, leads into my rant of the week: Why does society, even to a degree now, force us into that corner, between choosing and the inability to choose, and expect a result that is uncomplicated and untangled in the body, in desire, hell...in society?  It's not possible, because if one provides a paradox, the only way to exit it is through another paradox, and then another, and another...another cycle of violence, this one taking place between the heart and the mind.  Boyer and Sanford, being vessels for society's own punishment and cruelty, are only guilty insofar as Eliza is guilty of falling in love and accepting her right (as a perfectly adequate human being) to say no to a comfortable life in favor of one that is thornier and more resilient to the placid dullness her society seemed to almost require in all affairs.  One cannot, CANNOT, put a price on desires, much less ask to visibly simplify them, to adjust and realign them so they fit into the schema of Society, of what we THINK is able to be understood, and NOT what is actually meant to be unearthed in such an understanding.  It's all about appearance here, and apparently, to be resistant to this superficiality meant you were outcast, and exiled, in unimaginably horrid ways (I've linked to it below, but do check out The House of Mirth for an equally harrowing portrayal of a Ruined Woman).

The worst part about it, of course, is that neither man would have satisfied her...she would have, regardless, ended giving up her desire and her happiness in exchange for something darker and much more inefficient: resignation.  It's true that her friends, few she had, tried to warn her at first, but that these warnings came at the price of gossip, of whisperings behind cloistered little drawing rooms, in the privacy of one's own dinner parties...well, none of that should be surprising, for that is the spring on which scandal flows, on which Society builds its own foundations.  Boyer was too stuffy, Sanford too liberated...no happy medium on which to grow love and affection, true or otherwise...and this is a delicate balance that sometimes isn't provided to us, having nothing to do with how good-hearted we are or not.  Life is very Objective like that sometimes, a harsh lesson Eliza was thrust under in her final years.  Plainly put, my main objection to the entire text (in reference to what it speaks to, not the words themselves) is that, once again, we let ourselves get carried with the Word and refuse to accept that each Word can, and usually does, have many meanings.

What I'm saying is: A woman isn't just a woman, but she's a Woman, and in this society especially, it was taken to be a free pass to judge and describe this Woman as one chose freely...giving in to the VERY dangerous trappings of simplifying and decoding what will ALWAYS refuse to be simplified and decoded.  A woman is also a human being, is also the carrier of blood, sweat, tears, organs, emotions, thought...she isn't  just a piece of clay, a mold we can move and deign to choose the path of, otherwise...what would be the point in being human?  We'd just be manipulated corpses, for that is all we are when we remove the inherent Paradox of being Alive (or being Woman, for that matter).

You see, Boyer or Sanford, Eliza would have never been happy, but she would have been a free woman, and you know, despite her horrible ends, I do agree she was, all the way until her very bitter final breaths.  This isn't to say she made the right choices, or knew what she was doing, etc....all this rant is meant to translate is the simple notion that we are choosing creatures, and can NEVER be satisfied with the life that is handed to us forcefully by societies, can never be okay with not being able to be okay with uncertainty and indecision...we must always be on the lookout for the next contradiction, for the next leap into madness and absurdity...things I'm sure would have made Eliza's life seem all the more typical.

Poor Woman, that not only could she not choose Right, but she wouldn't have known what Right was if it had stared her in the face.  Such is the folly of a society that names the unnameable, and then throws away the meaning...

Quotes of Note:

"Let me then enjoy that freedom which I so highly prize."

"Marriage is the tomb of friendship."

"I am anxious, lest you should be made the dupe of a coquette..."

"I am convinced of that excellence which I once slighted; and the shade of departed happiness haunts me perpetually!"

"Necessity, dire necessity, forced me into this dernier resort."

"I really wish she had less merit, that I might have a plausible excuse for neglecting her."

"I am too much ingrossed by my divinity, to take an interest in any thing else."

and, of course, what I found to be a most notorious quoting, from Proverbs 9:17: "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant."

Here is a fantastic preview for an adaptation of a novel very close to The Coquette's heart: the aforementioned The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.  Have a look for yourself, and see if you don't see the parallels falling into one another:

A Ruined Woman, part II