Shelley says over here that ‘there’s something impersonal and dispassionate about anger.” I know how well she writes, and how carefully, and so I’ve been turning over what she wrote, looking at it from different angles, trying to puzzle out what she meant. Can anger really be dispassionate? Is that what people mean when they talk about ‘cold anger’? Could that be a bad thing?
I’m pretty sure anger is an energy, cold or hot. I remember being an angry punk, once upon a time. Well, more of a drunken yahoo of a punk, perhaps. Angry though, in between episodes of skipping around like a loon shouting about ‘joy’. Regardless, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel rage welling up in me the moment I stopped to think about the glories of our civilization, and the wonder of our achievements.
Call in the airstrikes.
could be wrong
I could be wrong I could be right
I could be black I could be white
I could be right I could be wrong
I could be white I could be black
Your time has come your second skin
The cost so high the gain so low
Walk through the valley
The written word is a lie
Still, I’ve always been the eternal optimist, sifting through the dung looking for a diamond, and I wandered all around this planet, wide-eyed, pushing myself to be childlike and unangry. A real hippie twat, basically. Trying to see the god within each and every person I met. Failing too often, succeeding far too rarely, flying my freak flag high. Peace, love and vegetable rights, man. Anger? Love! Rage? Peace!
That worked pretty well for a time, but the drugs probably helped more than I cared to admit.
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
Could be wrong I could be right
Could be wrong I could be right
I could be wrong I could be right
I could be black I could be white
I could be right I could be wrong
I could be black I could be white
They put a hot wire to my head
cos of the thing I did and said
And made these feelings go away
Model citizen in every way
I’m still expatriate, of course, and I still am unfailingly kind to people, until they cross me. Then, well, then I puff up and turn all the colours of a sunset, and browbeat them until they submit or go away. And then I get quickly unangry again. I’m like that.
I have never stopped being angry at hypocrisy and hate and stupidity and cupidity, either. And yeah, angry at the sinner as well as the sin. Turning the other cheek’s all well and good for the meek, but I’m not going to be around to inherit the earth. I just don’t have the patience. So, model citizen, me, right? Going around with a big red ‘W’ on my chest, fighting for the common man, righting wrongs and kissing babies.
f–k no. But the other thing that Shelley said, that ‘anger is the ultimate camouflage for what’s really going on in our heads and our lives’ doesn’t make sense for me, at least. Anger is the the natural and consequent reaction to taking a good hard look at our lives and the lives most of us are shoehorned into, through our own weakness and through the strength of others and through random dumbf–k chance, and realizing that we’re going to die. Much too soon, each and every one of us. Ashes or wormfood, or, if maybe scraps for the birds to tear at. In anger, we reveal that we know there can be more, and wish for more, for better, for ourselves and others, and we also reveal that we are too bound by our own chemistry or history to do more than pound the bones and screech like apes before the monolith.
But that’s OK.
Because the coin of anger rotating in the air, reflecting those glints of sunlight, has an ouroboros head as well as a tail. There is no anger, for me, at least, that is not backed an impulse similar to the one that some buddhists express when they perform a wai — palms pressed together, fingers pointing skyward, with a shallow bow. I acknowledge the god within you.
Anger is peace, thwarted. Love, unrequited. The face of god, almost touched. The heartbreaking awareness that you (and so, all) just might not get there, wherever there might be. And ranging as it does in denomination, like our coin flipping up there in the air, the anger can be fire banked against the coming night, or a bolus of flaming tar catapulted at those who thwart the good.
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Could be wrong I could be right
Could be wrong I could be right
I could be wrong I could be right
I could be black I could be white
I could be right I could be wrong
I could be black I could be white
Your time has come your second skin
The cost so high the gain so low
Walk through the valley
The written word is a lie
But what the hell do I know? The written word is a lie, and it’s possible that I’m just stringing together justifications for my rage, popcorn-garlanding words, holding up another mask, more for the fun of it than from any necessity. I found my own path. Quite possibly not the right one, but it’s the one I found, and so that f–ker is holy to me.
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
Could be wrong I could be right
Could be wrong
They put a hot wire to my head
Cos of the things I did and said
They made these feelings go away
A model citizen in every way
Your time has come your second skin
The cost so high the gain so low
May the road rise with you (Hey)
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
There was a time when I was one of those Seekers After Truth that the hip, ironic-McDonald’s kids tend to laugh at, often with good reason. Looking for some kind of truth outside myself, raging against the machine. Now I’m a model citizen, older and less convinced that any truth that could have any meaning for me lies anywhere outside myself and the threads that bind me to other people.
But I remain angry, and I maintain that that is the outward sign of my attempts to be honest with myself. It’s my honesty with the rest of the world, and it’s both personal and passionate.
I only speak for myself. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. That’s cool.
Thakns for the link to Shelley. I’m impressed with her insights, but especially I’d like to point to the sentence after the one you were responding to :
“Anger is the ultimate camouflage for what’s really going on in our heads and our lives. People don’t look too closely at you when you’re angry.”
She’s got a clue, and I respect clueful people : anger is what we do when we want to be our true selves for a few minutes and we know that the rest of the world will pay attention while not paying attention, look at us and then immediate forget they saw us.
This is what is liberating about anger. Being ourselves is a good thing, but we can’t do that very often, right? Damn, that would be dangerous … so we let it out in fits and spats. And later, we will need to divorce ourselves from that reality – anger is a little like drunkenness (for some, they go hand in hand, of course) and we love the fact that we can later say, “Hey, I was angry / drunk, so don’t worry about it.”
It’s a temporary insanity that allows us licence – in English, “mad” means both angry and insane. Wonder why …
Stav, thanks so much for responding, and giving me much more to think on. I only have 2:48 minutes left to use for my current session at the library, so will respond more fully tomorrow from coffee shop. But I did want to say, thanks.