I listened to Stef’s video “The Meaning of Life, pt 3″ twice tonight. I’ll listen again in a bit. Just after my second listen, I began to have a dialogue with a dark-haired girl of about 8 or 9 in my head. She was upset, because her dad had done something that she thought was not virtuous, and she… well, she wasn’t exactly afraid or apprehensive about telling him… but I think she was more upset that her illusion of her dad as a 100% moral being who never slipped was a little bit thrown. I began to talk to her.
“You know, sweetheart… we all slip sometimes. We’re none of us perfect. I wasn’t always a virtuous person. There was one time – this was years ago – I had a go at your dad. I cursed him, even. It was wrong of me… but I apologized, and I made it right. And that’s what virtuous people do. Even your dad… he used to believe that war was ok in defense of the state. But one night, someone convinced your dad that his argument was wrong.
“That man did your dad a service sweetheart. If people come along and give you an argument – and are not criticizing out of insecurity or for criticism’s sake – and you can accept that argument as logical and reasonable, and change your position, then the person who corrects you is doing you a service. And moral people – virtuous people – take those arguments that other people give them, and they hold them up to reason, and if they’re reasonable, they thank the person who gave them the argument – for pointing out their errors, and also for thinking highly enough of them to wish to do so, and think that they would get a good reception. Because not everyone will take a pause to consider what people say to them against reason and evidence, and act accordingly.
“So we all slip, love. But the mark of virtue is to realize it and correct it, and to listen to criticism and others’ feelings, and then do something to correct the breach – not because you’re scared or anxious, but because you’re moral. And that’s all that morality, that virtue require – that you do your best, and correct your mistakes when you make them. And the kind of person that your dad is, is the kind of person who can and will do that. He’ll thank you, love, for pointing it out.”
It’s obviously not Stef’s 13-day-old daughter I’m talking to. It’s quite another child whose wounds I was attempting to drop balm into – or who was attempting to drop balm into mine. And I’m feeling sad… but it is really a rich and deep sadness.
I feel closer to the child than I have in many months.
Last night, for some unaccountable reason, I began watching Youtube vids of The F Word, one of Gordon Ramsay’s shows. I remember there was a time when I wanted to be a chef. Mother went back to school when I was 7 as an excuse to stop my modelling career, which was taking off and bringing in quite a bit of money. She went into a culinary arts program. She still can’t cook to save her fucking life, but I was able to watch a lot of her classes and was exposed to a professional kitchen. Neither mother nor my grandmother could cook – and both of them hated the task – so I began taking over the cooking when I was about 8. I was by then a pretty good cook, having watched Julia Child and The Galloping Gourmet, etc, religiously.
A little while ago, I started feeling… not the usual restlessness, and not even frustrated or anything, but just… sad. The phrase that occurred to me in my head was “I want your good opinions… but the truth is… that I don’t want them enough to change what I’m doing. I don’t want them enough to deny myself and take the ’safe’ path. I know I won’t keep any of you by taking the dangerous path… but I can’t care.”
The thing is, this isn’t true. And I know it isn’t.
Let’s be logical about this.
What would throwing everything up again and taking the “dangerous” or “exciting” path be for?
To make us happy.
But we know what adulation we get when we take that path, and from what kinds of people.
Yes.
We’ve met people who are on that path.
Yes.
We’ve even FUCKING COUNSELLED THEM, FOR GOD’S SAKE, TO GIVE IT THE FUCK UP!
Yes.
So… what’s it going to do for us now?
I hate this! I want to go travelling! I hate this! I hate being here! It’s like waiting to die! It’s the fucking picket fense mausoleum with golden retrievers and madras plaid shirts.
Do you believe that?
No.
Then why say these things?
AAAAAAAAAAA!
Howling void, why say these things.
Because I’m scared.
Of what?
Of trying to please these goddamned people. You’re not running after virtue, you fucker! You’re running after their good opinions only, and where the fuck has that ever gotten us?
If “these goddamned people” are virtuous, it cannot hurt to take their advice.
First off, how do we know they’re fucking virtuous? We’ve had a great track record of picking them lately.
That was YOU.
NO IT FUCKING WASN’T! That was ALL of us, motherfucker!
Fine. Fine. You said something else.
That it is WRONG to go into this less than wholeheartedly. I think we have to go lower.
Sink lower.
Yes.
Why?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
So your whole point is to destroy us a little more.
YES! You fucking dolt, you idiot!
And you think that by the time that happens we can’t come back. Once we’ve alienated these people too we’re not going to have much cause to go on, are we.
No.
So that’s your fucking point.
*smiles*
You know what, FUCK YOU. That pisses me the fuck off. You’re in here, and your whole point is to fucking ruin this for all of us.
Well, it snapped you out of your reverie.
Go on?
Well this is the first time you’ve felt anything lately. What the fuck have you been doing? Not much. Watching goddamned telly. Opiate of the goddamned masses. And you’re chasing… virtue? You can’t even turn the fucking tube off.
Well, you have a point.
Concentration broken.
Yeah.
By one of those fuckers who’s on that path.
Yes.
By the same fucker you conselled to GET SOME COUNSELLING and work out her shit.
Yes.
By the same fucker you counselled that she does this because she had a very tenuous and uncertain relationship with her mother and she wants to blow things up and hurt other people before they hurt her.
Yes.
And she agreed.
Yes.
And she said that your going to Russia reminded her of something she did, aged 21.
Yes.
WELL YOU SEE THE RESULTS, MOTHERFUCKER! HOW IS YOUR FUCKING SITUATION DIFFERENT?
I don’t think you want to destroy us at all. I think you’re trying to help me, asshole.
Yeah, that’s much worse, isn’t it.
DON’T help me.
Oh? YOU’RE the one who wants to rot, aren’t you.
We’re not good enough!
Go on?
We’ve never finished anything we’ve started.
Go on?
We’ve lied and shammed our entire lives to make people think we’re better than we are.
Go on?
This whole life has been one fucking punishment avoiding thing after another, and our going after this illusion of fucking “virtue” is to please those safe bastards now.
Is it?
Well.
See, now the tables are turned. Project much?
It doesn’t make logical sense.
Go on?
They’ve no power over us. Why should we want to please them?
Two things: either this quest for “virtue” is a complete reFOO and we should get therapy, or it’s not a complete reFOO and this quest is real and we should get therapy.
Don’t use their language.
Quelle autre langue est disponible?
Pffft. Fine, fuck off.
Well?
It’s so fucking difficult.
Well… yeah. But what would be more fucking difficult would be feeling like this for the rest of our lives.
We don’t want to be like that.
No, we don’t.
We secretly loathe what they are.
Why not loathe it openly?
We need them.
For what? You tell me – fine, no movie quotes. But for what?
Well, tomorrow.
Ok, and you couldn’t get that from the free market?
True.
What has she actually brought into your life.
It’s “my” life now – not “ours?”
That’s what I said.
I thought you said before it was all of us.
Heh. Hypocri-sea. Goooo ooonn?
Fine, “our” life. Nothing.
BS, come on then mate!
Fine. They’ve brought in an illusion.
What illusion.
They can be saved.
Do you actually believe they can?
Not for a minute.
But you try to assuage it by counselling them.
Yes.
And they want your counsel for the same reason.
Yes.
And… this is healthy?
No.
But you’re still going to give them that sanction.
Tomorrow I am, yes. And for the rest of tonight. I’ll even apologize to her for snapping at her for talking to me when she SAW by her own admission I was fucking intent on doing something, and not to bother me.
Oh, that’s a great position to be in.
I know it’s not, but what can I do.
Don’t give me that line of shit. You know right well.
But that would throw up my plans.
Um… no. It would make you more honest, is what it would make you.
But I won’t do it right now because it’s difficult.
That’s why you’ve failed, and will keep on failing. You don’t have to make this shit look easy any more. No one is going to punish you because it’s difficult. Not even me! Who are you trying to impress? People you don’t give a shit about anyway, and who don’t give a shit about you. How about trying to impress the people who matter, for once. Stef, Colleen, Jake, the Gregs, Rich, Christina, and the others. Even freaking Nathan for crying out loud.
If I tried to “impress” them, they’d scorn me.
For knowing it is fake.
Yes!
Well, now you’re freaking on to something. Anyone you’ve got to impress – or feel you’ve got to impress – isn’t worth impressing. Anyone you feel you’ve got to lie to isn’t someone you want in your life. Anyone you feel scared or apprehensive about meeting is a douchebag not worth your time. FLEE these fucking people. Have a sense of fucking self-preservation, for christ’s sake. Don’t go about abasing us in front of people we shouldn’t even be giving the goddamned time of day to. It’s embarrassing. YOU’RE – we’re – embarrassing when we do this. And everyone sees it. Everyone in here… and whatever remnant of true self amongst these other assholes, yeah? They don’t want to be abased to. If someone had fucking stood up to them at one time, it would have changed their entire goddamn miserable fucking lives. But it won’t make one bit of difference now. So just fuck off. Run the fuck AWAY whenever you see one. There’s no honor – no glory, no impressiveness – in “Saving” or “standing up to” these assholes. Just run away. Go away, and talk to better people
*sad*
No, I’m serious. The peoople whose good opinions you were thinking about earlier are these assholes. You got it wrong. The people you’re not keen on impressing are the people who demand it of you. The path you’re not willing to take is the one that will ruin your life and your – OUR – only one fucking chance of happiness for these cocksuckers who don’t give a shit about you or themselves or all the world. You LOVE us more than you love a single one of those cocksuckers because they don’t deserve it. WE deserve love, and your true friends deserve love, and you sell us all down the fucking river to get in your kicks and give a good show to the yokels. Yes, I’m fucking berating you, because this was what you wanted, wasn’t it. This was what you needed, wasn’t it! I’m fucking livid at THOSE FUCKING COCKSUCKERS, not at you! It’s THEM I hate with a fucking passion, and it’s THEM I would walk through fire to fucking tread on, so that you get to the people who actually matter. US internally, and the virtuous friends you’ve been fucking neglecting and cutting yourself off from.
*feeling lifted*
You know the fucking people you should ACTUALLY go and fucking apologize to for snapping at them? How about Jessen, yeah? How about Rich and Colleen, who were fucking scared to actually tell you that they felt like shit after you went to see them. How about Jake? How about freaking JC, and Nate, and Stef, and James and Greg who are scared to even talk to you? How about you take the actual sadness that you’re finally fucking feeling and DO something – not to manage it, but to finally fucking acknowledge it, and lay it to rest. Because this is the sadness you’re feeling from fucking THEM up, and fucking US up, and generally… fucking up. And I’m STILL not mad at you and I’m STILL fucking there for you… and I wouldn’t tell you any of this goddamned shit if I didn’t believe you could actually win through, and make your apologies REAL to us and to them, and work on going forward from here. I KNOW you can do this shit.
We.
WE, yes. Together.
Who’s first.
You’re first. THANK YOU for this. Thank you for the tension. Thank you for the sadness. Thank you for the restlessness. Thank you for the contempt, and the moroseness, and the anger, and the lowness, and for the anxiety, and for that sick pit in my stomach whenever I spoke to any of those assholes about the apartment. THANK YOU for the signs which I have ignored – “until now,” I want to say, but I can’t promise 100% in the future.
Of course you can’t. If it was as easy as saying “From now on,” then I WOULD be fucking pissed off at you.
Thank you for acknowledging that. And for pointing out my douchebaggery. And for still thinking enough of me, after 22 years of separation and of my not knowing you and acknowledging what you are, to effect this change. Or to give me – us – the chance to effect it. For still thinking enough of me to say you know I can do this. Even after the promises I’ve made and not kept, and my being afraid but not acknowledging it, and swanning off or pulling away… and all that.
Is in the past… at this moment.
Yes.
Because it’s only this moment. Acknowledging what’s past, and what brought us to this moment… but the only thing we can change is this second on.
Yes.
And no promises of perfection.
No.
As an aside, you’d not be thanking me if I demanded it.
No. But I forgot something.
What.
Thank you for protecting me. For protecting all of us. And if I’d let you come through and acknowledged your messages, I would have known when I – we – were in danger, or when we were endangering others.
You would have.
Well… I’m still feeling tension.
It’s the undone that is that weight on your neck. We can talk all day, but until you DO something – and not in the spirit of anxiety-avoidance, but in the spirit of actually acknowledging your own feelings and working to make things right – you’re going to feel it. And you’re going to feel it more till this is done. This is only the beginning.
I’m keen to start.
No you’re not because you’re making plans that start the day after tomorrow. A mutilated sacrifice.
We won’t talk in terms of sacrifices.
Won’t we? Do your best. It’s all I want.
Yes.
Something struck me today: in the languages I know best – French and Russian – every military-oriented word I can think of has a feminine gender.
Let me back up. English – unlike a great many other languages – does not have a system of “gender” in its words. A small example of this would be the third-person plural subject pronoun, “they.” In English, this can refer to a group of males, a group of females, or a mixed group. It doesn’t matter. In French, however, there are two third-person plural subject pronouns: ils and elles. Ils is used to refer either to a group of males, or a group of any size which has at least one male in it. (There could be a million women and one man standing in a place, and you’d refer to that group as ils anyway.) For a group composed entirely of females, you’d use the word elles.
This is a small example. Not only pronouns, but verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech have gender as well. For example, in French:
Il est instituteur. – He is a teacher.
Elle est institutrice. – She is a teacher.
Some words have only one gender – and here’s where we get into it.
In French:
l’armée
la militaire
la bataille
la lutte
These are just four words: army, military, battle, and struggle. All four words take the feminine gender.
In Russian:
армия (armiya)
воинско (voinsko)
сражение (srazhyeniye)
схватка (skhvatka)
The same four words in Russian: army, military, battle, and struggle. армия and схватка (apologies – Cyrillic looks really different in italics) are of the feminine gender. воинско and сражение are of the neuter gender.
Ok… enough of the fooling around with language. I’m interested in the reason why these words should be feminine.
That leads us into psychology. :)
It leads us into historical feelings – repressed or expressed – about female anger, I think.
I’m not going to try to break down a theory here, because I’m using this as an example, to get to the following point:
When you study a language, your worldview changes. Studying a language is not just about being able to say s’il vous plait or pazhalsta instead of “please.” It’s not just about travelling, or being able to read books in other languages. Studying other languages really does broaden your mind – but not in the way you’ve been taught.
It may be hard to visualize, but the English word is very insular. How much do you actually know about Russia, to take a broad example? Probably only what you’ve heard on the news, for example. So when you hear that Russia is in South Ossetia issuing “passports” to Ossetians, you’ll probably think that Russia is impinging on Georgian territory or something, and trying to mint new Russian tax slaves by the cartload.
What you would have actually understood, had you been able to listen to the interview in Russian with the peasant the reporter spoke with, was the Russian word propusk. Which means “internal identity document” – not “passport.” A propusk is what you are given at the gym when you buy a membership there. Anyone and their brother can take your picture, write your name and patronymic on a slip of paper, and give you a propusk. They’re the furthest thing in the world from passports. (Incidentally, this is not a simple mistake. The Russian word for “passport” is pashpart – which means the same thing as it does in English and is never considered the equivalent of propusk. The word was mis-translated for a reason.)
The world of English (and the worlds of Russian, French, etc) are insular worlds. Your movement – your knowledge – is limited by the language you can speak. It’s very difficult to go outside that little sphere of ignorance without the passkey that is a second language.
The most important thing, I think, is that learning languages allows you to understand how people think. It really does. In my head, for example, krasnye and rouge and “red” are three different colors – each influenced by the country whose language the words come from. People really do see the world – and even colors – differently, and so much is lost in the translation from krasnye to “red.”
I’ve found it enormously easier to have empathy for people when I’ve spoken their language. If I put one of you guys down in the middle of Siberia, for example, and you saw someone walking down the road… wouldn’t he seem an alien? You don’t speak his language. He doesn’t speak yours. You may as well have not seen anyone at all, you’re separarted by an interstellar distance.
But if all of a sudden you could speak Russian, and went over to him and said something like “What is your name?” (Kak vash zavut?) a world would open up. Suddenly, the fellow would be no longer strange. Either way, he’s still a human… but isn’t it just a bit easier to believe that if you speak his language?
The best thing I’ve found to come out of learning languages is not self-aggrandizement or even functional utility… but the ability to put myself in someone else’s place in a way I couldn’t conceive of before. Realizing how language and how the words of that language really limits thinking. (Why, I might ask, are cultures whose “war words” are associated with the feminine quite dominated by females, and quite violent?) Being able to separate myself from America’s “culture” and step outside it… and to realize that all countries have a similarly instilled “culture” which keeps the slaves in line is maybe the most useful of all.
Anyhow… I’m working on a system (along with other things, of course) which I hope will bring a language student up to advanced-level fluency within about 6 months of first beginning to study a language. I’ll be posting updates and trials here – and I’d be keen to know if they work for you. I’ve studied French through traditional classes for over 10 years and I am still not advanced. I think – using the training I’ve received and the experience teaching English – that I can learn Turkish in 1/20th the time. Let’s see. :)
Anyone want to learn French? I’ve almost got that system worked out.
I seem to have discomfited a few people (namely a few people whose parents knew foreign languages and did not teach them to speak these foreign languages) when I mentioned my thought that it is a crime not to teach your children any foreign language of which you have some mastery. They objected to my use of the word “crime.” I don’t blame them for their objections, but nonetheless I think that it is a crime. Let me explain:
Admittedly, this crime is the least of the many we suffered under as children. Failing to teach your children languages is not evil, whereas yelling at them, beating them, ignoring them, starving them, sexually assaulting them, and all such other things are evil – and crimes. But… it’s not just about the languages. Think for a moment.
When you were a child, your parents probably showed some interest in your education. If your parents were anything like mine, this is mostly because they could then use your high marks to inflate their ego. They did none of the work. You did all the work. Yet they took it as a source of pride for them to have an intelligent child. As if they had some virtue in the matter, which they did not.
Yet, notice this: if your parents knew a foreign language, why did they not teach it to you? Well… I have a theory. Here it is:
It would have required effort on their part.
This seems really obvious, of course, but let me flesh out the argument.
What would teaching you a language have required of them? Patience, dedication, empathy, closeness, lots of together-time, attention and care, thoughtfulness, and many other qualities. All of which – if your parents were anything like mine – they did not possess!
Teaching you a language would have required of them an actual commitment to your education and welfare. Which they did not have. Which, I think, they had the opposite of.
So not teaching you a language that they had knowledge of isn’t the cause, but a symptom of lack of empathy or care on their part. They had knowledge which they did not impart to you during a time when the language centers of your brain were wide open and ready to receive. They deprived you of an entire world of literature – and an entire world of people. They deprived you of the ability to think critically, the blessing of an open mind, and all the boons that language learning can bring. They made it harder for you, later in life, to learn a language if you so choose.
That’s among the many things in your life that they made harder.
This is one of the least egregious examples, yes, but still it’s really hard to admit: your parents didn’t give a good goddamn about you.
(There will be a part 2 of this – about the empathy that language-learning teaches you.)
I think that how people live says a lot about them. Scratch that. I know that how people live says a lot about them.
Mother lived in a place that was decaying around her. My grandmother chose the living room colors, and painted over the 1970s dark wood panelling first with nauseating bubblegum pink, and then with an annoying fluorescent shade of blue. Mother complained about both colors – and the fact that the gaps in the wood panelling had never been filled in, so that the paint sunk into the recesses – but never did anything about it. The furniture was breaking down under her enormous weight. Her favorite place to sit was an enormous oversized easy-chair… which she just fit into. The upholstery was hideous, but it didn’t matter – she would always sit on a towel (ostensibly to protect the chair, as she went around without underwear) – because within a year the springs on the chair were so worn down that it was like sitting on a hard bench of compressed cotton.
In the dining room, partially blocking out the sight of the mis-hung (originally vertically striped, but now hanging at an angle of some 30 degrees) wallpaper, was a 64″ jumbo tv. Mother had to place it in the dining room, because if she put it on one of the living room walls she couldn’t see the whole screen from her chair. This television was invariably on, and playing either Oprah or Dr. Phil. The only art in the entire house was a framed Renoir – a bad reproduction of a lady in a black and white striped dress with a parasol. Mother did not choose that art.
It got worse in mother’s bedroom, where a mattress and a box-spring sat on the floor. The room’s only other furniture was yet another television. In the afternoons, mother would sprawl on this bed and watch soap operas. When she was gone to work at night, I used to jump up and down on this bed – to get rid of “excess” energy and tension. (I still hop up and down in one place sometimes whenever I’m impatient or upset.)
Like mother, everything was shabby and dirty and indifferent. The kitchen crawled with roaches. The white tile on the floors was invariably dirty. The wallpaper clashed with the Renoir and with the television in the dining room, and the sickly yellow of mother’s bedroom walls lent a funerary air to that room. The whole house felt as though it was about to crumble. As though that was the place that people went to die. (This was eventually proven correct, when one of the couches in the living room was replaced with a hospital bed for my grandfather, who was – not quickly enough – dying.)
Anyway… enough about that house.
The apartment that I have just rented and am looking into furnishing is a good apartment, but it’s not the apartment I want. The place I’m moving into is about a block from the harbor in a small town in Connecticut. It has the usual granite countertops, etc, nice dormered living room and bedrooms, and won’t get too dark – I think – despite the dearth of windows. There is a master bedroom, a smaller bedroom to use as an office, and a living room which looks out towards the harbor. I don’t plan on buying much furniture, since nobody will ever come to the apartment except me.
The apartment I want however…
The apartment is in a high-rise building right around 23rd street. It’s on a very high floor, and has floor-to-ceiling glass on three walls. The windows face towards the skyscrapers uptown, and the places where the walls meet look like two prows of a ship cutting through waves – sailing towards the skyscrapers. It’s furnished very simply and sparsely – a few pieces of mid-century modern-esque furniture (like this, for instance) – a couch and two chairs – form a semicircle (or two sides of a rectangle) facing towards the front windows. They have their backs to the black-and-white modern kitchen, and to the bedroom behind – entirely closed in, but with white drapes hung on the walls to simulate windows. Black and white, and modern, is the theme of that apartment.
Right now, that apartment I want is kind of like me – or… at least the way I fancy myself. It’s kind of… sterile, if you catch my drift. Black-brown and white. No accents – I thought about adding blue silk accent pillows to the description, but they seemed out of place in my mind’s eye. That apartment – with its white furniture and drapery and carpets – is not a place for children. Not a high-traffic place with a lot of entertaining. There are no guest rooms. It’s a portrait gallery with no portraits in it, really – it is built to show off the city behind its glass walls… but also, I think (since there are no drapes on those walls of windows), built to show off the inhabitant inside. Living alone on top of the world in the sight of 8 million people. A beautiful – too beautiful – but lonely place.
Before that, the ideal house was something like this – extremely small – placed out in the middle of a prairie somewhere in Wyoming.
The house I was going to buy in TX if I didn’t get into Columbia was a 1920s Craftsman-style which was gorgeous on the outside but needed a lot of work – the plumbing and electric was all original to the house.
In the eulogy that “my husband” wrote a month or so ago, he talked of having a large house with a number of always-filled guest rooms, and children, and animals. Some sort of rambling Colonial with bright furniture and a homey atmosphere came to mind. Right now, I can’t see myself in that house, or that place, or that lifestyle. What has to change in order to make me want that? Should I even set that as a goal or move towards it? I don’t think so. I think that whatever changes are needed will come about organically – without my setting it as a goal – as a consequence of other work. I may be wrong… but that’s sort of what I feel like.
So I’m moving into a quiet, sheltered, dormered affair in a small harborside town. When I stepped into it, it felt “safe.” I’ve already thought of art for it – this, and this, and this. All sort of painterly and otherworldly. My favorite paintings – The Ambassadors, Las Meninas, and others… seem to have no place in this apartment. Which may yet be alright. The Almond Blossoms seems to be more like where I am than Las Meninas does.
Filed under: vie quotidienne
I looked at the mother towering over me.
“I’ll hit you! I’m going to hit you real hard, do you hear?! Stop playing with it!”
This was not my mother on the train, but I felt some fear, and the same disgust that would come over me whenever my own mother threatened me. This mother was not tall, but she still stood over twice as tall as her child – a little boy who was innocently fooling with his Spider-Man umbrella.
The boy did not look up at his mother, but continued to look down at the umbrella. His fingers stopped momentarily.
“Do you hear me, boy? Give me the umbrella, or I’m going to hit you.”
Fantasies of calling the mother out right there in the subway car occurred to me. Fear kicked in, and made excuses – something about 200 people watching in the car taking the mother’s side, and the mother just hitting the child all the harder later.
I settled for giving the mother a dirty look.
It worked… because the mother started threatening her child in Spanish. The father hung back with an imbecilic grin on his face, saying nothing.
The child said, “But I’m just playing with it.”
The mother got annoyed, “Don’t play with it! Give it to me.” “No!” “Give it to me.”
I glanced at the mother again. She took her child up in that mock-tender tone that I so hated in my own mother:
“Richard, we’re getting off at the next stop, ok?”
At the next stop, she was not tender. She grabbed the child by the puffy folds of his winter coat and steered him off the train. They disappeared into the swirling crowds of the Bedford Avenue L platform.
I’ve been thinking about that child since.
I was thinking last night… that I don’t feel much anger towards that mother. Maybe I should, but I don’t. It is an abominable way to treat a child – you do NOT hit (or even threaten to hit) children. It’s stone fucking evil. And no doubt, since she made that threat, she has hit the child before – and no doubt the imbecile father has stood there gawking in the same way.
I do feel some disgust. I do feel some sort of visceral anger – but… I can’t quite connect to it. I’m not there yet.
What I thought about last night was this: the mother probably doesn’t know and can’t imagine any other way to treat her child. She – being in the Spanish and therefore the Catholic community – was probably filled with the “Spare the rod, spoil the child” nonsense, and acts out her own hurt on her son. And that’s what it is… history.
The mother had to have a reason to be mad with and hurt her child. It’s got nothing whatever to do with the damned umbrella, which he wasn’t doing anything to hurt. It’s got nothing to do with just punishment (if there is such a thing) or anything like that. The mother responded to my dirty look only because she knows somewhere inside her that treating her child thus is wrong – or she would have continued to threaten him in English.
The mother wanted a reason to inflict the pain she had felt as a child on her own boy, and thus feel “angry” at him and get relief.
Now, I am beginning to feel. Only a little sick… but I’ll let it come.
This, apparently, is what is meant by “poison container.”
Poor child.
Filed under: vie quotidienne
I have, pending final approval, found permanent (i.e. a year-long lease) housing.
I was really disturbed by something I saw on the train today. More later.
Filed under: self-work | Tags: deFOO, hamlet, life story, self-work, shakespeare, therapy
That was actually the name of my first blog: “Unpack My Heart With Words.” I started it, aged 16.
It comes from a scene in – wait for it, wait for it… – Hamlet.
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon’t! foh!
This happens after a mid-length speech where he discovers that an actor of his acquaintance can show more emotion over a fictional queen than he, Hamlet, can show over a real dead father. He accuses himself – having not immediately killed his uncle for murdering his father – of being “pigeon-livered” (i.e. a coward) and other things. The bit above is him saying that since he doesn’t seem to be taking any action, he has to talk about it (and talk only, instead of acting).
I realized this evening while watching that soliloquy that the “like a whore” bit references confession. A woman – who in the middle ages had very little other recourse to make a living – prostitutes herself, and then goes to confess to the priest. She cannot stop what she is doing – or take actual action to repent – and so she goes to the confessional daily to be “forgiven” for that which she must do but cannot do.
Hamlet “must” kill his uncle, but cannot do it – and repents of it in this speech. The prostitute “must” stop prostituting herself but cannot do it – and repents of it in the confessional.
The reason behind my original blog title was a bit of a jab at myself. But really… I was in the same situation. Which is why I liked Hamlet so much, and why I think I revert back to thinking of my life in terms of that play during a reFOO, as I’ve been experiencing lately.
The situation I was in at 16 was this: I realized mother was corrupt. I read The Fountainhead at 11 and Atlas Shrugged at 13 (not a boast – just the facts) and was pretty heavily into philosophy and libertarianism at that time. Stef wasn’t around… but I realized that my mother was wholly irrational and just plumb fucking insane, but I couldn’t get out of her house. Legally, financially… you name it. I was trapped with the corrupt. What I felt I “must do” – i.e. get the fuck out – was also what I could not do. And so I wrote about my anger and frustration and hatred of her in that blog.
The tagline of my blog was “Fie upon’t!” – basically a nice Elizabethan way of saying “fuck it.” Which is, frankly, pretty much how I felt about life.
I haven’t been saying “fie upon’t” lately in regards to life… but it’s been mighty tempting. That old thought of “you’d best not try” is really tempting… but I think I’m soon going to overcome this latest round of reFOO and Hamlet-itis.
3 of 4 therapists have contacted me back. I got a bad instinctual feeling about one, so he’s out. Once I settle the transportation issue, I’ll schedule consultations with the other 2.
Going to see the estate agent tomorrow to look at apartments. There is a chance I will find one for January 1st move-in. If I can – and I get a good instinctual feeling about the situation (and actually take some time, as requested, to THINK about it) – I will try to get settled by 5 January, and make the first appointment for that week.
I am going to try to do 2 sessions a week – a mid-week session and a Saturday session.
So… frankly, no real progress yet, but there’s a hope of progress soon, and a path cleared to do so. Rand mentioned, through Ellis Wyatt, needing only an unobstructed right-of-way to move the world. That’s what I’m aiming at.
The soliloquy in question:
…with the person I called the “psycho stalkerbitch” (more on that in a moment), I would have said this:
Dear M——,
This isn’t going to be a lecture. I’m not in a position to give you one, given my own corrupt actions as of late. I can’t change anything about you at all, but I can tell you my feelings.
Frankly, I feel great fear whenever you contact me. Fear, and a fascination almost exactly in quality like the fascination I feel when my FOO emails me. I have given up looking for their emails in my trash bin for the past couple of weeks, and turned instead to looking for yours. I find it sickening and worrying that there comes a “high” even with the sinking feeling I have in the pit of my stomach when I see your email address. I am also quite afraid to pick up my telephone lest you be calling me from a different number than the one I have blocked. But next time, I shall pick up the phone and speak with you, if it is you.
I’ve been thinking – and also denying that I was thinking – yesterday about what made you what you are. Sure, you make choices and you threaten me of your own choice… but in reality what I’ve begun to see is the choices that the people who raised you must have made, and how often and how long you must have been threatened in your childhood. Because a person who was raised in a loving and supportive environment would not make the choice – or even conceive of making the choice – to be as you are. In a big way – recognizing elements of my own actions in yours – I pity you. I can’t say that I have much empathy – at least under my definition, “empathy” is reserved for people who might perhaps heal – but I do have pity.
Pity is not a good feeling. Pity is what you feel when you condemn a person to being what and who they are for the rest of their lives, knowing that it is as likely for the moon to fall from the sky as it is for them to heal, and become good people. Pity is for when you know that you can’t do anything worse to them to punish them than to let them alone – and leave them alone with their own thoughts. I don’t relish the feeling. I have pity for people like mother – and pity ennobles neither the person who feels nor the person whom it’s felt about.
I also feel sadness… but I’m not sure where it comes from. I have a theory – that I am sad for myself and for what I’ve been denying feeling in your presence – but I’m not sure it’s right. But I feel some.
I also feel… well, “defensive” is a word for it, but I’m not sure if that’s the right word. It’s a need to be “right” at all costs. Unfortunately, what being “right” here has cost is the truth. I’ve had to deny and lie and obfuscate about a lot of things in order to be “right” – I’ve had to lie to myself as well as to you. From the very first second that I met you, I felt the need to lie. And – though I should have turned on my heel and left right then – I didn’t. My MEs warned me, and I blew right past the warning. That scares me.
So, in all honesty… I hate you. But it’s that sort of weary hate that acknowledges its own guilt. It’s that sort of hate which acknowledges that I don’t have the high ground, and I’m not in the right, and that even though you’re a bully and it’s really not at all about you getting your money… I have to push those “bad” thoughts out on to you even more than you deserve, so that the calumny is not turned inwards.
I hate you as a substitute for self-recrimination. If we’re being honest.
By the way, if you phone me today I’ll send you any amount of money you want. But it won’t ease my conscience, and it won’t remove the curse of family from you. You moved back in with your parents… to save money. God, it’s not worth it.
C.
(or, at least, with Stef in the form of podcast 1239)
“When we maintain the irrational… we must manipulate and lie and evade and attack…”
“If we didn’t know it was a lie we wouldn’t resort to such tricks.”
“It’s impossible to respect yourself when you do these ignoble things.”
[note: this was going to be a text post, but the MEs took over.]
I want to be able to respect myself.
Then do respectable things.
Not quite that easy.
Of course it isn’t easy. If it was easy, you wouldn’t respect yourself. The harder it is to be virtuous, the more honor there is in the virtue. We know this already.
I’m not happy.
How virtuous have you been lately?
Not very.
Not very? Can you tell me one thing you’ve done in the past 6 months that was virtuous?
I listened to criticism two times and was grateful, though it hurt me.
And what else.
I came back to the US, and I called these therapists.
And what else.
I realized what I was doing – lying, evading, putting myself in dangerous situations, hurting people – is wrong and..
You’ve been corrupt towards yourself.
Yes.
Is it really any wonder you didn’t want to journal in Moscow?
No.
Why – I want to hear you say it.
Because I needed to maintain that internal delusion – fogbank, evasion, obfuscation.
Why? For what purpose? What have you gotten out of all of this weaselly behavior? What have you got out of shitting on people – yourself most of all?
That’s a bit harsh.
A bit? You say you want to respect yourself, and then you hide when anyone comes right out and says it to you. What you’ve been doing is wrong, and foul, and will lead only to unhappiness. And you knew it – we know you knew it, becuse you attempted to hide it. What I want to know is WHY? What good came out of it?
Besides the goods that will accrue now.
You can’t use that as an excuse. The goods that are accruing are things you gave up to go on this jaunt – a stable home, a job, and a therapeutic relationship. So you can’t say that this whole little episode was to gain those boons. You’ve put yourself back 6 months for what, mastermind?
That’s what I intend to find out.
Oh, you intend. You intend. Tell us now! Say it!
I hate you. You’re a big bully.
And just like the other one you’d be happy to do our bidding if only we’d be soft with you.
I might more cheerfully listen and heed your advice.
Cheerfully? Is this something to be cheerful about? You’re spending Christmas alone – and enjoying it, for some unknowable reason, or at least you tell yourself that – because no one will be around you.
Well, is that not deserved?
Yes, it’s deserved.
Well? Should I be morose because I’ve been given a chance to improve?
You had one before, you cow!
What if what Nate said is right. What if this is really the fastest we can improve. So what if what you were saying before is true, and people have completely written us off. (It’s NOT true, because at least some of them are willing to help us – but let’s give you the benefit of the doubt.) How many people did we write off who have done amazing things and come back to impress us?
None have strayed from that path with less cause than you.
But we don’t know that! I can’t give you the answer to “why” – but I can take you to the place that will help all of us find it. I think there is a cause, or we would not have done it. You saw how much energy it took to get us moved.
Less energy than it took to obfuscate the fact that you’d gone off the rails – and you turned to Stef of all people for a justification. And he was right that you could have dealt with some of these things abroad… but you didn’t, did you.
No. And – I’m anticipating your argument – even all the energy we’ve spent both physically and mentally in the last 6 months does not equal the amount of energy it would have taken to really make a go at therapy.
You’ve grasped it.
And because you’re angry at me, you’re making me take self-punishing action.
You’ve miscalculated?
Well, you say you don’t want to do this stuff… and then you yell at me and you’re completely incurious…
…no more incurious than you’re being with me…
and then… Alright, fine. Fine, guilty as charged. We’re both being incurious. Which is one of the reasons why we have these problems, my dear!
I’m not going to be first to make it up.
So you want me to listen to that podcast again – ok, two of them – and be the first to capitulate.
See when you phrase it like that, how does it help us.
You want me, then, to be the proverbial “better man.”
No, still not right. How does sarcasm help us?
I’m sorry. I’m doing right now what I’ve been doing all along. I don’t want to admit I’m wrong. I don’t want to admit I’ve miscalculated. I’m scared of being attacked.
And rightly so…
…because I’m attacking you?
Hah. See how that thought was reversed.
It made it more true. I’m attacking first.
Like a counter-offensive. What we always did with…
…mother. Ex-act-ly. Pre-cise-ly.
So this all goes back to her.
Well, she set it up. But you’re the one who set it whirring again.
For what reason?
Now who’s asking why?
But we can go to the place to figure this out.
Sure.
Till then I want to be safe. Can we have a cease-fire?
No. Because you won’t go as slow as is required.
I’ll go slower.
No, you won’t.
Try me.
Prove it, then. If you actually pause at any time in the next 10 days before you take a decision, I’ll be flabbergasted.
Going slowly makes me sick.
You know a synonym for quick?
Heedless.
Exactly. Heed-less. Not listening. Everything becomes a blur – of motion. You obfuscate.
If you do the same thing and expect it to yield different results…
…then you’re mad. Can you respect someone who is mad?
Not if they have chosen the madness.
Can a madman be virtuous?
Not if the madness is of his own choosing.
Then don’t choose to be mad. And by the way, stop reading the emotional repression manual that is Rand. That shit didn’t work when we were 12, either.
Any port in a storm…
…of your own making.
You’ve a point.
Now go sort this stuff out. Don’t add procrastination to your list of other faults.
“Go slow” and “don’t procrastinate” contradict each other.
You’re wrong, and you know it. Go prove it to yourself. Also, stop buying things.
Yes, I ought to.
Feed us – simply – clothe us – in the stuff we already have – and shelter us – in a permanent home and not this series of a-room-and-a-plane-and-a-room-and-a-plane-and-a-room-and-a-plane we’ve been on for 6 months.
Saturday then, if you’ll help with negotiations.
We’ll be there.
This has been painful. But thank you for the help.
Such as it’s been.
Don’t underrate yourself. That’s my province.
Heh. Go.
