Mart-deBlog

Almost a year ago, I posted an article 'Freak Out' which defended two ideas:

• "Commitment issues" arise from a relationship extended into eternity as a subconscious substitute for not believing in one ideal partner in life. By imagining the relationship as if it were forever, it becomes clear whether the relationship is itself alive or dead, whether the other depletes or invigorates your energies. I said that a "commitment issue" does not really exist, properly speaking, and that only right or wrong relationships exist.
• "Commitment issues" seen as a confrontation with death, was further analyzed as being a fixation of both partners with regard to each other, one as needy and the other as giver. I assumed that in every human being both a needing-side and a giving-side were (sometimes only potentially) there, thus every fixation would feel as a contract, killing the dynamics and lively aspects of a relationship.
  

Back then I was remaining single because of having the freakout feeling already by simply observing and getting to know someone. Never could I be in a relationship with any of the people around me. Now that I am actually in a relationship, of course I have more to say on the freak outs that we all experience at some point. *Yes I have changed my view on freak outs and no, not because I freaked out myself and want to save my relationship...*

We freak out when we are confronted with, of course, some kind of freak. When we have a freak out because of a commitment issue, it is because our relationship appears before us as a freak. Indeed, I think there are instances when the relationship between oneself and the other suddenly appears as a thing, when the relationship has a sudden existence on its own before our eyes. Normally we are in the middle of it, encapsulated by it and there is no way to see the relationship from an outside perspective. Especially in the early stages when we are 'blind of love', we are simply lost within the growing relationship. But when the union (because that is what it is for partners to get to know each other) between partners momentarily stagnates, one's individuality is free to move outside of the relationship and observe it, before the union is fulfilled. The relationship becomes disclosed in a distinctive form. In other words, the form of our relationship is seen aesthetically, as something appearing with a surface to 'look at' and aesthetic qualities to please or displease us.

We are not used to this and especially relationships that are somewhere in between young and old (like all adolescents and middle-aged things) will often be horrific monstrosities, ugly freaks of nature. To describe it metaphorically bodily terms, you will see an uncompleted fusion, her arm to his shoulder, his eye and her nose, hairy and smooth legs coming together in a vagina with balls. Relationships in further stages become fused further, hopefully in better balance, with his eyes and her hair, his legs with her skin around it, and an androgynous body. Sometimes elements in a relationship are shared and averaged out between both, sometimes elements dominantly originate from him while other elements originate from her. The competitions and uncompleted fusions, can slowly synchronize and harmonize, while from the inside-out aesthetic principles will be at work from both of the partners. I think therefore it is crucial to have harmonious notions of a beautiful relationship, there cannot be friction there. The freaking out is due to the monstrous appearance of a yet uncompleted creation.

Now I still believe the other ideas apply in general, the freaked out relationship needs to change and cannot be prolonged into the future in the form that caused the freak out because it is simply ugly. One can start to feel trapped in the relationship, when a certain element has always to come from one person (e.g. she always has to be the feet on which they stand). The ideal relation should be an ongoing changing creation, sometimes it appears with his eyes and sometimes with hers. It is ideal since a relationship that continues to recreate itself in new forms, thereby extends itself beyond time and degeneration, having an eternal life or being that Romantic perfection which I still believe everyone should strive for.

When experiencing the freak out, when having a commitment issue, I think the proper question to ask oneself is why the relationship can appear before you as a thing, and whether you saw just a moment in a vigorous clash of elements or the end result of your relationship. Did the freak looked as if he was still growing and changing or did it look more less as the final product? If it is a freak with little prospect of further creation, then take responsibility and abort it. But it is also true that the serious relationship in their most earliest stages can freak you out the most, as the ugliness of initial chaos from which things still have to grow in their right proportion.

I am back in Berlin for my last ten weeks. The Doctor declared me sick and I am not allowed to go to class. So I went into the city to read, ending up in the S-bahn that goes around through Berlin and I sat there for several circles. In my window, the heart of Berlin passed by in the cinematic movement of the train, moving from East to West to East to West. On my lap lay one of the best books I have read in a long while. I was struggling, when I was looking outside the train, my book burned in my lap but when I was reading the book, the diversity of Berlin screamed for my attention.

Studying philosophy (or studying anything) implies that you close your eyes on the world, and direct them to the world of letters and concepts. Either you read or you absorb the environment. Essentially then, reading a book always disconnects you from the surroundings. And this the origin of the conflict between my stay at ECLA and my stay in Berlin: ECLA is a 'not-Berlin' and Berlin is a 'not-ECLA'; these two worlds oppose each other, one can only be in either one (see my previous post). And especially so because Berlin is my environment, I have never felt so easily connected to a place, so easily part of a culture but the same goes for the environment of philosophical discourse in which I am rooting more and more. But to leave Berlin for a moment, if I want to devote myself to philosophy it seems that this schism will be my home, I will always live between the book and the presence of things, as philosopher you can only be homeless.

But a small epiphany came over me while I was sitting in the train today, caught between book and window, between the abstract and concrete. Being homeless is not necessarily the same as being lost. There is a nomadic existence, the life of constant movement. Already, Plato wrote about the cave and the intellectual who breaks from the bonds of community and leaves the cave to see the sun, already Plato hammered on the act of traveling itself, advocating the return back into the cave. Philosophy is always associated with an ivory tower, and to be honest, my whole life I have actually dreamed of having a house with an immensely high tower. But I always have trouble dealing with elitism and I often prohibit myself from building the necessary towers of perspective. Then, today in the train, I had the simple realization, of building the highest tower possible, to strive for ascending high-up into the sun and then journey all the way back to earth, spending a nomadic life of transcendence, in never-ending circles of ascending and descending. Thus I calmed down, lowered my head to read, and I read about Hegel and the development of human consciousness in History through diverse Master-Slave relations, until I had enough and raised my head, to see a tough-looking skinhead nervously checking his pockets and the conductor with a self-aware grin...