The Pleasures of Hating

I just heard this poem read aloud by Garrison Keillor on NPR. It's funny cause it's true. It's also funny (and charming) 'cause it's a "gob of spit" (to borrow Henry Miller's expression) in the face of political correctness and all those who say that a truly "enlightened" or "spiritual" person should never feel hatred, much less its pleasures.

Whenever the word "should" creeps in to the conversation (or the internal dialogue, as the case may be), you can bet that the ego has crept in by the back door, the tricksy little bastard.

Judith Lasater once advised a roomful of yoga teachers to "stop shoulding all over yourselves". I love that. I've endeavoured, ever since, to more or less remove that word from my vocab.

So here's my little fuck-you in the face of all that I supposedly "should" be, as a yogi, as a bodyworker, as a seeker, as a "spiritual person". (What IS a "spiritual person", anyway? That phrase always strikes me as completely redundant. We are spiritual beings by definition. It doesn't make any of us special. Deal with it!)

So without further ado,

The Pleasures of Hating
by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

I hate Mozart. Hate him with that healthy
pleasure one feels when exasperation has

crescendoed, when lungs, heart, throat,
and voice explode at once: I hate that! —

there's bliss in this, rapture. My shrink
tried to disabuse me, convinced I use Amadeus

as a prop: Think further, your father perhaps?
I won't go back, think of the shrink

with a powdered wig, pinched lips, mole:
a transference, he'd say, a relapse: so be it.

I hate broccoli, chain saws, patchouli, bra—
clasps that draw dents in your back, roadblocks,

men in black kneesocks, sandals and shorts—
I love hating that. Loathe stickers on tomatoes,

jerky, deconstruction, nazis, doilies. I delight
in detesting. And love loving so much after that.

"The Pleasures of Hating" by Laure-Anne Bosselaar from Small Gods of Grief. © BOA Editions, 2001.