Montaigne’s Heiress

(edited since the intial post this afternoon.)

I’ve been thinking on these lines from Dante’s Paradiso this afternoon:

All that you held most dear you will put by
and leave behind you; and this is the arrow
the longbow of your exile first lets fly.

You will come to know how bitter as salt and stone
is the bread of others; and how hard the way that goes
up and down stairs which are never your own.

So… I’d be happy to do a formal analysis on that bit of the poem if anyone is interested, but he’s talking – historically speaking – about the war in Florence between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. When he mentions the salt in the bread, it is because they do not put any salt in their bread in Florence (they don’t to this day) and thus of course to Dante the bread everywhere else must have tasted salty.

But… for a couple of reasons it’s odd that this quote should come to me today. The first is because it is used in the forward for a book which is intimately bound up in my history, for it reminds me of Donnie and thus my adolescence. But that’s not the first thing that happened today.

The first thing that happened today was that I was awoken at 7am by my phone ringing. I didn’t know who it was, but the first thought that popped into my head was “Mother’s dead.”

Well, she isn’t. However, the person on the phone was my aunt B – as I’d guessed. I do not usually listen to the phone messages that she leaves me (and now that I have no one, save one person, who needs my phone number, I will very likely be changing it) but I chose to listen to this one.

It contained two pieces of information:

1. She is sending me her credit card information in the mail, with which I may – she so nicely added “if you want to” – buy a plane ticket to go to my cousin’s wedding. This is the second offer in 3 days from a member of my family to subsidize my trip to Houston.

2. Hans has had a heart attack and a stroke, and is in a coma, and very likely to die. Hans was my aunt E’s boyfriend for nigh on 15 years. He abused both my cousins (physically and verbally, and in the case of cousin A – if I had to hazard a guess – sexually) and my aunt, and was generally a horrendous influence on them during a vulnerable time in their lives. Most people in my family hated him. B certainly did. My grandmother called him “The Gigolo” – often to his face – but had an odd relationship with him. They… improbably enough… “liked” each other.

So, as GG pointed out, the news about Hans is a ruse. I only met Hans once in my life. We were not at all close, and I’m certainly not emotionally invested in whether he lives or dies. He abused my cousins. But it is the cousin that he (as I believe) sexually abused that is getting married. B said something like “it’s odd to inform you of the impending death of someone I didn’t like very much, but…” Subtext: the death of Hans is difficult for your cousins and aunt. Come do your duty at the wedding.

Well, I shall not do my “duty” at the wedding. First and foremost, it’s not my duty. I never had any wish or intent to attend the wedding. I have even less of a wish now. It’s really the last place on earth I’d go, frankly. If I’ve told all of them that I will not see them… then they cannot truly expect me to come.

So what can they expect? Why do they continue to phone me? To act as though we’ve not broken? To act as though nothing is wrong at all? In all of the messages that they’ve ever left, no one except mother has ever mentioned my leaving – and she only did that at the beginning. The messages they leave sound like the ones they’ve always left me – sarcastic, foggy, and bereft of good will. And for a reason: they think I’ll “come around.” They still think this is a phase – or do they?

Well… there are arguments either way.

For their thought that it’s a “phase” :

1. They affect not to mention my departure. To my knowledge, no one outside of B and mother knows that I have cut off all contact.
2. The repeated sending of money and goods to woo me.

For their thought that I’ve left for good:

1. See 1 above.
2. See 2 above.

These things can be taken either way, I guess. I’m getting a little foggy, so bear with. Now… either the news has not spread around my family because B and mother think that I’ll “come around” and eventually relent and apologize, and they don’t wish to rock the boat, or they’re keeping it hush-hush because it’s extremely embarrassing.

Hold on. Before I make these arguments… does it matter? I’m giving my thoughts to what they’re thinking now – as if it mattered a whit what they think. My energies could be better spent elsewhere: for example, in figuring out why I still can’t feel anything even after acknowledging that mother knew the consequences of not treating a certain medical condition of mine in my early adolescence. Why I’m still foggy there. And of course… good god, loads of other things comme ca.

So is this a distraction then? It’s a good one. Dear me.

So what else am I missing. GG mentioned that B is giving me a choice between my values and everything that she’s known I’ve held dear for ages – truth, logic, honesty, etc – and… the family. Duty. Tradition. And, of course, she naturally assumes that the family and duty and tradition trump my feelings. Don’t like us? We don’t give a shit. Come anyway. Can’t stand the fact that we continually condescend and put you down and minimize your feelings and, frankly, hate you? Don’t give a shit. Come anyway! Rendered insanely angry by the fact that we stood by while your mother abused you and laughed at you when you asked us for help? Fuck off and get over it. Come anyway!

Yanno… just the thought that she… naturally assumes that I’ll eventually give in… just reinforces the fact that I want to have nothing fucking whatever pas du tout jamais rien to do with them. Thanks, B! Now, to call the phone company and get a new number.

The next 3 lines from Dante in that poem – about falling into bad company on a foreign shore – are instructive.

It’s not them I’m exiled from. I’m not exiled now. I was exiled – from my own world of truth and reason and first principles – when I was among them, and it would be exile to return. I just want to make that clear. :)