Bishop on shame (just when you thought you could hold up your head)

Beloved friend and fellow poet Bronwen Tate sent me this extract from Elizabeth Bishop's "The Country Mouse" in her Collected Prose:

"Three great truths came home to me during this stretch of my life, all hard to describe and equally important. Emma and I were sitting under the chestnut trees, making conversation in the way both children and adults do. She asked me about my parents. I said my father was dead; I didn't ever remember seeing him. What about my mother? I thought for a moment and then I said in a sentimental voice: "She went away and left me. . . She died, too." Emma was impressed and sympathetic and I loathed myself. It was the first time I had lied deliberately and consciously, and the first time I was aware of falsity and the great power of sentimentality -- although I didn't know the word. My mother was not dead. She was in a sanatorium, in another prolonged 'nervous breakdown.' I didn't know then, and still don't, whether it was from shame I lied or from a hideous craving for sympathy, playing up my sad romantic plight. But the feeling of self-distaste, whatever it came from, was only too real. I jumped up, to get away from my monstrous self that I could not keep from lying."

Essay on Shame #29

This is the last day of my essays in shame. I was secretly hoping to transform myself, to shed my shame through writing about it; for mistake-free me to lay down her arms and melt into me like we were two drops of water and for the new waterdrop, the new larger and more united person, to dance in the streets and tell the truth always. Or at least that shame would become less compelling to me, less of a compulsion and a draw.

None of this happened. I was methodical, and earnest, and met the commitments I made. For that, I give students in graded classes a B. I tell them, "B from me is a good grade. It means you did everything I asked you to." What I give them an A for is moving beyond what I asked them to do into a new insight, or a harder question, or a greater degree of complexity. This almost only ever happens when they care about the thing they're doing, itself, with the grade, the outside judgment, as a pleasant side effect. They have to attach their worries, their excitement and even their standards and judgments, to their actions--what they do to make the the thing, and how it comes out--rather than their invisible intentions and clamorous selves.

Essay on Shame #28

Last night there was a march/parade/dance party downtown to honor the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. I don't know how it was, because I didn't go.

I love the idea of public engagement, vivid, raucous, explosive. To protest, to celebrate, to reclaim, to activate public and free spaces. I recognize its power and beauty, its ability to help people feel close, alive and brave ...

... but I hate doing it. I hate chanting and I'm not crazy about dressing up. I imagine myself judged for doing it and judged for not doing it. I don't want to stay the same and I don't want to change. I stay in the house of shame.

Essay on Shame #27

When I was 20, I went to teach for Summerbridge (now called Breakthrough, I believe) San Francisco. I was an immature 20; I didn't look for housing on my own, opting instead to do a homestay with the family of a kid in the program. After about two weeks, the head of this household told the program that I needed to leave because I had a negative attitude.

I'm ashamed of how I behaved that summer. I was whiny and dependent, instead of taking responsibility for my living situation. I was also a bad teacher -- impatient, volatile, unmethodical, bad at prioritizing, taking everything too personally. Teaching badly is particularly shameful and horrible because of the power differential and because the harm a bad teacher can do can be so lasting--think of bad teachers you've had. Some teachers may be great at it from the moment they step into the classroom. I learned to be a good teacher from being a bad one, feeling terrible, fixing what I was doing wrong, and then building beyond problem-solving and troubleshooting to include the real work of teaching and learning--spurring each other to greater and more complex understandings, getting more flexible and more precise with what you know and what you can do.

I'm a pretty good teacher now, and I know how to get better at it -- I know what I want to reach for next -- and I learned that partly from being bad at it. Being bad at it was, in that sense, good for me: it was a part of my development.

But it wasn't a part of my students' development, or it was a bitter one, even if the bitterness was fleeting. I think I did some good things with and for them, but I also think I wasted their time, confused them and made them feel bad. I used them in my arc, and I'm not convinced the use was mutual enough. This is one situation in which, rather than being a paralytic or a tourniquet, (my) shame really has acted as a spur for (my) improvement -- it's worth it to me. I love teaching and I love being good at it. But I have trouble saying it's worth it, period, when the way I learned to do it better meant embittering someone else's days and confirming their suspicions of learning.

Essay on Shame #26

Actions: I've been thinking more and more that any sense of who I am needs to come from what I do. Not what do I intend, but what do I actually do? Not just because that's what other humans see or know, but because that's what actually reaches them, directly or dilutedly. If anything has an effect in the world, good or bad or energizing or corrosive, it's my actions, not my intentions or thoughts or even standards.

I've been reading P.W. Martin on Jung (I should probably just go ahead and read Jung) and he says that the Shadow is more frequently expressed in inaction, in omission, in the things we don't do. In my mental vocabulary, what I don't do is the province of guilt, not shame -- but it's often the fear of shame that drives me back, both the fear of attracting negative attention and the fear of actually hurting someone. It does hold me back from actions that might produce beautiful or useful sparks.

Essay on Shame #25

I talked on the phone yesterday with both my sisters and we talked about shame, though we didn't use the word. In one conversation we talked about the mean mistake-free self (although she visualizes either Edward Cullen, from Twilight, or a bunch of weasels) and how badly it wants her to stay in the past and focus on things she can't change or do differently -- to trap her in time with her mistakes. This takes that divide, that split, to an additional level of malevolence -- the mistake-free self is actually trying to destroy the mistake-making self, to remain alone, hollow and sterile, cold-blooded and chattering and sparkly, in the world, half-dead and half-alive.

With my other sister I talked about reducing the amount of time between flailing and realizing the flail -- making the mistake of unkindness, of misinterpretation, of violence -- to seconds and hopefully to negative seconds. To know what selves, what impulses, may be lying in wait in the very near future in this complex of thoughts filled with enemy actions.

Essay on Shame #24

Shame as deterrent, tourniquet, deflector, screeching brake: as far as that goes, it can work. If it doesn't provoke me to be more of an ass to prove that I was right to be an ass in the first place, I will probably stop -- as previous essays have shown -- doing whatever it is, whether it is genuinely harmful, just unsuave ("You liked X?", also known as every conversation I had in high school), or -- and this is where the blur begins -- just not liked by the person I'm talking to.

But it doesn't just stop the thing I'm doing. It stops everything I'm doing. I sit still and my brain churns and steam comes from the gears, as aforesaid. I'm thinking now about the kid I want to have: what I will do when I need her to stop doing whatever it is (or think I do) and what I will do to get her brain moving again. If I could figure that out, maybe I could do it for myself too.

Essay on Shame #23

I searched the memory banks for times I tried to make others feel shame -- wish fervently they could go back in time -- and I came up with two main things.

One: times that people have said something homophobic around me. My responses have ranged from, "Could you please modify your language?" (to a couple of guys behind me on the bus) to, "You know being gay isn't bad, right?" or--if it's the second time or more--"You know I don't like that" (to people, younger than me, that I know fairly well).* My goal is immediate and, at least in my mind, clear: I want them to stop, and I want feeling bad to be part of what makes them stop. I am using shame as a pressure point, or maybe as a tourniquet. This seems all right to me: I don't have time to have a slow and reasoned conversation with them, because I need to stem the flow of aggression and spite. I hope, too, that next time they're tempted, they'll remember that they got grief for it last time and think, "Maybe it isn't worth it." Not a change of heart, but a change of surface.

Two: times that someone has asked me for something I do not want to give. Instead of just saying, "I don't want to do that," I try to make the person feel bad for asking me in the first place. This works in exactly the same way. It works as a tourniquet. Next time, maybe they won't tell me what they want. Not a change of heart, but a change of surface.

*I know these don't sound all that harsh or weapon-like. One reason for this is that I am not very brave. The other, related reason is that Option 2 for responding to shame--trying to find reasons why it was really okay to do whatever it was, and thus no shame is necessary--is a particularly common, and aggressive, response to this kind of assholery.

Essay on Shame #22

A book I haven't read by a writer I admire has been on my mind yesterday and today, since I saw a review of it in The Rumpus: Joyelle McSweeney's Percussion Grenade. The section of the review that stood out to me, which is also featured on Montevidayo, reads thus:

"The violence we throw on the human body and the shame we expect of one another are all endlessly reflecting in language. McSweeney asks us to inhabit the conflicting edges of that reality, mouthing the power and joy that come with degeneracy. She does not let us read for beauty or lyricism, but makes us active participants, tongue-tied by our own culture."

Aside from my total jealousy that I did not write this book, and my fear that reading it would make me feel terrible (I'll probably still read it though, because apparently I love to feel terrible), the phrase "the shame we expect of one another" is what made me focus on that excerpt. I've been writing about my own shame throughout this series, but I'm also part of "people" and "one another"--I also have a seat in the stadium of shame (possibly more than one)--and maybe it's time I started thinking about the shame I expect from others as well as myself.

Essay on Shame #21

I thought of a nice phrase to describe what I'd like to achieve: forgiveness without erasure. A way to hold steady and full the understanding of Jerk Move #798 without seeking or even craving absolution (who would absolve me, anyway? The injured party? Yeah, that's a great idea -- stomp on someone's fingers and then ask them to tell you it's okay). Just a bowl, even if it's a full and kind of spilly bowl, to carry my mess in. Without questions of whether I deserve one and who else gets one and whether or not it's too much to ask. That bowl, that container for shame, that forgiveness without erasure, is something I want.

Essay on Shame #20

Today I can't even remember who I talked to recently in a way that I should be ashamed of, a savage withholding. The erasing machinery's already at work, and this is what I fear when I put down the flathead screwdriver of keeping the gap open and shame activated: that I don't deserve to forget what I did. It's too terrible and I'm too terrible.

Let's do an experiment together, mistake-free me. You can be my lab partner who's embarrassed to work with me. Here's the hypothesis our science teacher gave us, the one we're stuck with, just like we're stuck with each other: what if what I did is too terrible and I am too terrible?

Someone else's being will be eroded.

Everyone else who knows will love me less.

What experiment can we set up to test whether this actually happens? We would need to stick around and watch that person and their being for a long time. We would need to pay close, anxious attention. We would also need to watch the people who know with sickening, diamond-bright precision. What would we be able to see, even with the finest instrumentation and greatest degree of panting awareness? A change, a shutting-down, a falling-off?

Essay on Shame #19

Of course it's fine to make a promise, but if I don't keep it I'm setting myself up for shame: Remember that time I tried and failed? Remember that time I made that promise into a lie? Or sometimes I say "you", twisting the flathead screwdriver into the gap between who I actually am and who I want to be: at that moment, I'm speaking as the person I want to be (mistake-free) to the person I actually am (riddled with mistakes).

But when I say "you", I'm speaking cruelly. Mistake-free me, with her glowing skin and her perfect pitch for clothing, is a mean jerk. She calls mistaken-me a stupid whore, a useless cunt, a vile piece of shit. My impulse was to say, "I don't talk to anybody like that," but of course I do. I talk to myself like that. The urge, the rage, to talk to someone like that is present in me. It is me, and periodically, it fills me entirely.

It occurs to me that mistake-free me is a somewhat high school version of a perfect person, like a puppet with really long, smooth hair. What does she want the shame of others for? Why is it so important to her for me to be someone else?

Essay on Shame #18

This weekend I sat on a backstairs porch on a hot summer night with two people I like a lot, two people I don't know very well but like fine, and one person I adore (James), who made one great joke but otherwise didn't talk much in the conversation I'm about to respond to. Everybody else joked about incest, told stories about shitting in plastic bags, offered to shit on each other's chests and disapproved vehemently and profanely of things I needed explained. I couldn't always tell whether they were being sarcastic or serious (one of the two I like a lot has the best line in deadpans of anyone I've ever met). I got increasingly uncomfortable and squirmy and eventually went inside to go to sleep.

All four of the talking people are anti-status-quo in a wide range of ways, most of which I admire, and I bring this up because the shame I was feeling was partly status-quo shame, societal shame -- "People don't talk about that stuff!" even though of course they do and anyway, if something really is harmful, it's not talking about it that makes it so. It was also partly my high school shame, which comes from the fear of being insufficient, revealed as inadequate, and which is the source of a good 40% of the lies I have told in my life. As of this moment, I vow to say at least 40% more often: "I don't know what that is. Tell me about it."

Essay on Shame #17

Shame is a restraint, a check, a negative reinforcement, a trap. It happens in the borderland, the place where the boundary between my I and the I or we of others is most permeable and smoky and mutually contaminated -- the I that feels shame and the I that commits the shameful act are shaped by others, or at least our ideas of others, individual people with names and bleachers full of a giant social and cultural other-than-me, or in-addition-to-me, that blurs together. People who have decided for me, without anyone making any individual decision, that one act is shameful and another is admirable. I caught it from them. Their shame, their admiration, is mine.

But the blur isn't total. It's not just a case of me flinching back from the mob or being swept up in it, as if by the moral and emotional equivalents of football hooligans. Historically, I have resisted situations, like shows and protests, where this could happen. I prefer not to be swept up; I want to be able to extricate myself, to withdraw my participation, at will. This makes me wonder if I'm also trapping shame, clinging to it, as well as the other way around.

Essay on Shame #16

I feel embarrassment and shame on the behalf of someone (not me) performing when their performance is bad in one or more of a few possible ways, most of which have to do with what I perceive as trying and failing. I also sometimes feel embarrassment and shame when a performance is good -- when it exposes something that people don't usually expose in public, like lust or misery, or crosses a threshold of intensity.

That second kind of embarrassment and shame is mine, on my own behalf, for being present and unable to "handle it". I'm disappointed in myself for not being able to manage, to reduce, something unmanageable, something that's the more powerful the less leashed it is, something that gains power through its very public-ness or publication of something that is usually private --

-- something I usually do by myself and am not ashamed of it there. Or something I usually do by myself and am ashamed of it, because I'm not really by myself, I'm imagining the stadium and that the people in the stands are in the same position that I, watching this performer, am in: wishing they were somewhere else because this is just too much.

Essay on Shame #15

My friend Darcie Dennigan wrote a poem called "You're an Embarrassment to the Void." The tenor of this poem is that any affirmation, any firm ground, any texture or pleasure or even interest, is a disgusting affront to ... well ... the absence of all of those things. A void is the absence of all things, but some things, Darcie suggests, are worse for it than others, more repulsive to total ending and the aftermath of dissolution. She writes, "Go ahead and add your own tale of the void's shame here," and leaves some blank lines for us to do that.

I love thinking about and probing the physics of poems (and Darcie's poems give great physics), although I rarely do this publicly (see: fear of being wrong / putting my leg in a position that's not weird enough). The poem's language ("the void's shame") suggests that the void is embarrassed or ashamed on its own behalf, not embarrassed for anyone or anything in the way I sometimes get when I'm watching a really bad performance. If the void can feel shame, there must be a self there -- and a fragile, irritable self, since it's so easily shamed; if the void can feel shame, it must be able to do something, to do something wrong. Every time something exists, the void has failed. 

Essay on Shame #14

If something is solved, I can stop thinking about it. If something is solved, that means it was a problem. If something is solved, that means I don't have to change anything I'm doing. It means I'm okay. It means the Stadium of Shame is quiet, if not empty.  And if a solution worked, that means I can just keep doing it, right?

Problem/solution is a closed system, and there's no such animal. Open systems eat, excrete, exchange parts of themselves with their environments, things like them and things different from them. You can't solve an animal except by killing it. When I die, I will no longer make any mistakes.

Essay on Shame #13

I was reading a Montevidayo post in which Lucas de Lima writes that self-determination "promotes values as stifling as enlightenment, individualism, and restraint" and I became extremely irritated and aggressive-defensive, like a ferret. The negation of restraint--and of agency, which the post also condemns--troubles me in particular because it seems like one of its quick descendants is, "It's not my fault that I hurt you" or "I couldn't help hurting you." Ugh, that's terrible. I'm ashamed to have typed that, even in quotation marks.

But then I thought about my life as a person participating in the money-world and in relationships with other people. The money-world sets it up so that I can't help hurting people by proxy. Some would argue that because it distributes damage so widely (the poisonous equivalent of, say, voting or donating to charity) and draws from so many sources my participation in it is actually worse than, say, punching someone in the face. I can see the logical and emotional truth of that.

And I do believe it's possible to hurt someone you're close to "by mistake" or "by accident" in the sense that hurting them was not a self-determined plan, but a side effect of misplaced or incomplete attention. In some ways, I'm more aghast when I do this kind of damage. But mostly, when I (individualism) do something* (agency) on purpose (self-determination) to hurt someone, I feel the worst about it. I may be mistaken about that. While trying to protect what's directly in front of me from my terrible self, I may be leaving a wake of carnage. But I'm not sure the solution is to remove the self.**

*This doing is usually saying. I haven't taken any other kind of deliberately harmful or vengeful action in a long time.

**The self -- my sense of self -- not myself. Don't worry.

Essay on Shame #12

Shame, the stuck time machine, keeps me in the mistake state, at the scene of the crime. It makes everything I do to mend the mistake into damage control -- damage to me.

How about this for an anti-shame reminder? "How other people feel is important, but how other people feel about me is not important."

But what if I really get behind that and push, and it turns out to be a mistake?

Essay on Shame #11

A little while ago, someone suggested that I take a yoga class -- a suggestion I met with a visceral "Hell no." I made my usual, widely-accepted excuses for not doing things (I don't have time! It costs too much money!). What I really meant was that I didn't want to put my legs in a weird position and have a stranger tell me that it wasn't weird enough while other strangers looked at me.

I am aware that ...
1) A yoga class is a class. By definition, you don't go to a class because you are already perfect at the thing the class is teaching.
1a) When I teach a class, I don't shame my students for not already being perfect at writing. I assume the same would be true in a yoga class, only with yoga.
2) The other strangers in the class would be trying to get their legs into weird positions and would not be worrying about mine.
3) If I were worrying about their legs, I would be the one who was the jerk, with a new source of shame.

 I didn't sign up for a yoga class. I've started doing sit-ups and push-ups and a few stretches in my own apartment, where no one can tell me I'm doing it wrong. And if I could be doing it in a way that's better for me, no one knows -- including me. I don't ever have to change what I'm doing because of someone else -- even though, by exercising in my apartment and in my apartment only, I'm changing what I'm doing because of someone else.