Christ can be the "id" if you let him...

jake and i were sitting at a coffee shop on sunday, when he asked me a question. (i start mini-traditions with myself that never last, every week, usually on sundays, and this was one of those. I had been berating jake via text about missing the weather all morning. he was feeling sick, so you know, okay, whatever, sleep. im writing a paper. oh wait, no I forgot, i'm writing two papers.)

the first was on William Carlos Williams. the second was for my semi-psychotic, sort of brilliant, most jewish person I know, professor for America on Film. (who, side note, is beyond ecstatic about my thesis and keeps sending me specs on sexual theory: it should be odd to receive an email with the subject line announcing "I Found it! 'The Myth of Vaginal Orgasm'"--but what can you do, when it's not?)

the assignment was to draw on our philosophy readings (ethics/transcendence/time) in one of the films that we have watched thus far. I chose The Searchers and Emerson.

This is the point of my post: Emerson's entire theory of transcendentalism fascinates me. but it's more than just interesting, in a way, i believe it... or believe in it.

Emerson connects time and nature, in a way that is Biblically equivocal. I mean, they were created to exist together. Both of which act as mitigating forces that, though they can seem to oppress the individual (the limitation of one's being), that is not their intent; that is the unfulfilled interpretation of them––the perspective of the unfulfilled man (Emerson's non-poet, the non-genius, and the non-idealist American).

Time is a process of Nature. Nature is a process of time.

And both of these are a dialogue with the divine. Emerson, and he bases his theory of America on this, sees the world and all its parts as, “flowing perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded centre” from within the individual; the world is “transfer[red] into the consciousness”; it pulses out of the believer, its rhythms and tides beat out in time with the lungs.

Though the idea of the self as a deity, makes Protestants and Catholics push Emerson aside as a wayward intellectual, what is it then that they believe that is so different?

The truth is that all the rhetoric around salvation––asking Jesus into your heart––functions on the signified soul, or center of the individual. Christ replaces, or no, I don't think Emerson would like the word "replace," but Christ, ideally, provides the same sort of gravitational harmony that transcendental language suggests.

So, in answer to Jake's thoughts on Sunday: Sarah, we should really start going to church. I say, no.

not yet. Its hoping versus creating. Church is a structure that I was raised within. Going and not going to church was synonymous with being or not being a good kid; or having parents who have their shit together. Well, I was at FSM every sunday and my parents had no shit together. WTF.

I don't know, maybe its Freud. Maybe he's right. Maybe the 'id' is the answer and the "super" is the problem. Maybe Narcissism (in Freud's meaning), is actually right on point. Infants have it figured out.

If we are redeemed by Christ, and his transcendence is imminent every day(it is that optical piece and sieve with which we take in and put out) than shouldn't we focus (and I mean focus, as a re-focus; meaning that we have been raised to listen to the other super egos around us, and certain things, may have been lost in translation) on listening to that center? and foregoing the system?

Sitting in Church on Sunday morning used to make me hate Sundays. Shouldn't that say something? I hated God's day, because of Church? For me, experiencing the ineffable glory of creation and seeing myself and my role within it, does not happen in a pew. Pews are for realizing how much you suck. and Ive had at least 19 years of that.

i know i suck. i get how lame i am. but,

Dont judge me for being an english major and therefore, undergoing a constant existential crisis, and just wantingslashdying to take a break.