I just watched this last episode of Will Trent, and I observed how his code — as a set of ethics, what I used to refer to as a belief system, which could also be called as a set of values or politics — crashes into the relationships that constitute his family, his personal life, his employment, and for that matter, the values that color and the relationships that form his notions of community and society beyond that.
I’m intrigued by this code as a short list of edicts which collide with or interact with relationships where a set of transgressions are necessary to break out of the shell and the self-imposed limits that have dictated the terms of any one of our lives up to this moment. In this instance, this long-enduring code bumps into the long-standing relationship, and there’s a choice point: do I choose the relationship over the code or do I choose the code over the relationship. There is an order and a dynamism between these two poles. Transgression occurs when they are oppositional and no longer in concert.
I’ve been intrigued by transgressions in order to defy some of the hardened ways that have stifled my life for decades. I’ve been curious about playing an instrument since I was a teenager. Rather than a relationship with another mammal, this is a relationship to an instrument, which may not have a heart and organs but can become a very layered relationship. Long ago, I imagined handling a trumpet, for 20 steady years I’ve had this lingering curiosity about the feel of a banjo, the size, the care, and how often I’d have to tune it. In the last year, I watched with wonder as people tune instruments without a tuning device, but simply by using their ear to listen to the fine qualities of sounds emitting off of strings bound from the tailpiece, over the bridge up to the neck. I marvel when a musician can listen to a song and figure out the notes in a melody and figure out how to play a sequence just having listened to the notes of an instrument. Miraculous!
Along with instruments, I’ve had a multi-decade quiet curiosity for martial arts and for Arabic. It is a restraint and a prohibition that I’ve not made time for and not set aside some minutes multiple times a week in order to explore by making myself available to these external stimuli, tools, and ways of being to see and feel and notice and learn in wholly new ways even while I’m still in this same body on this same plane.
transgression (noun): 1. an act that violates a law, command, moral code. 2. an act that offends, sins.
I’m drawn to labeling this a transgression as a way to bust up a set of old commands that I’ve held onto that repeated what I am not capable of: not learning that, not musically-inclined. The internal hater that’s repeated I am not capable or talented. How that morphs into my subconscious of what I’m not worthy of since I’m not capable of. That my body isn’t strong enough or pliable enough to learn how to move in this new way.
I suppose to transgress is to slay the dead thoughts of yesterday, even yesterdecade that do not dominate over me like they did in my 20s. My 40something self is removing the emotional clothes from my wardrobe that don’t fit, the clothes that haven’t fit for many years, but that I kept around even though I knew that they felt unpleasant and I felt deflated, if not defeated, when putting them on. That I put on and wore outside even though I knew they were unkind to my chest or ill-suited to my hips.
This, too, is a curiosity that asks: is this the love that I think I deserve?
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 