Thursday, March 26, 2015

I dunno, doc, it seems like when I visit family I cannot help remember her.  All the times I messed it up, when she was waiting for me.  It's like I didn't stand up for my own little family, all the good things it did raising me, all the work that went in to me.  I foolishly threw it all away over a course of a year and a half or so.  I loved her.  And yet I couldn't make peace between us.  I couldn't understand the part of the cycle that was rejection, her expression of dissatisfaction with me.  I couldn't see that as part of her waiting for me to fight for her, to be clearer about my heart's desires.

So there it is.  Like all the support my family had provided me, and as soon as I'm out on my own I act disrespectfully toward all that care and nurturing and the good parenting bringing out my talents.  It's almost like I was possessed...  Or I had some stupid quasi-religious idea about passivity...  leaving everything up to fate.  I'd put forth, and then I'd retreat.

And all you want to do, of course, is be respectful, to do what women tell you to do.  But I won't bore you with how I was a perfect fuck-up at every possible turn.

I tried to express myself.  I will say that at least.

Maybe I was needy.  Too needy, easily hurt.  Maybe I was self-medicating too much, yeah.  Which is of course not very impressive.

But I had all the talents I needed, along with all the opportunities, and I messed them all up.

That's how I could go about thinking.  I could see the vulnerability, of how I didn't make grandchildren happen for my mom to give her joy in her old age.  Irresponsible, all of it.

I will say, my mom points out maybe I wasn't cut out to be doctor-lawyer-banker-MBA.  That might be true enough.  It's kind of her to forgive me for being who I am.

And I do see a great wisdom in how my mom lives, which defies the way the world wants us to live now.

But here I am at fifty, struggling with this burden, which on a good day I interpret as some vision of deeper consciousness, an understanding of humanity that you can only really come upon yourself.  Not something they're going to teach you.

The first clue was an understanding of a diet appropriate to my own system.  We aren't all meant for the same mass-produced diet.  We get allergies.  Our guts go funny.  Our joints ache.  Our stomach and our pipes hurt.  We don't feel full.  Lots of things.

Yeah, back here on my own territory, I guess I torture myself less.

But I do believe in the primary importance of the matriarchal, and even what got me into trouble was being too obedient.  It would have been more psychologically healthy to, as they say, stand up for myself.  Then I wouldn't have had to waste all these years thinking about her, like when I wake up depressed, sore from the night shift.  That's just a part of the healthy way you have to think if the world's going to survive.  Women are more nurturing, closer to nature, less ego.  And I suppose that's why, ironically maybe, it stings so badly when we get rejected by them.  Indeed, it hurts.  It causes great physical and mental pain, like a sword going through your brain.  You have to walk it off, to let the sting ease away.  And that was part of my problem.  Because then I'd be too late, she'd have gotten impatient with me and seen it as a crucial lack of 'self-confidence,' as the modern world might interpret.  Stand up confidently for what you are doing, even if it is burning up fossil fuels, extracting them from the ground, polluting irrevocably everything you can get your hands on.  BE CONFIDENT!

In contrast to that, take Joyce.  I'd say he embraces more the feminine.  Writing words.

Or Jesus.  Happy are the mournful.  Maybe because they're the ones with some ecological sense, a spiritual sense, like it's easier for the poor man to enter the narrow gate than the man chortling over his riches, his selfish successes.  Happy are the meek, because they don't overdo it all so as to burn up every resource as one day we shall find out about.

In a way I wish I'd never heard about that, but, on the other hand it's wisdom.  And it also seems that nothing good comes without a deep cost, without a struggle.  I suppose that's why there are heroes and epic poetry cycles.  The poor hero going through all this life voyage stuff, the strange sights, the encounters.  The Greeks understood about ecology, they just had to put it in terms of cyclops and sirens and whatever else...   Enron.  Halliburton.  Koch Brothers.   Selfish people everywhere not giving a shit.

I dunno, maybe you finally realize the whole world is your mother.



Maybe we have to realize that we aren't the smartest of creatures.  We think we're smart.  But what do we know, like, about what's going on on the planet?  Then we should shudder.

Do we have to go through all these struggles to learn something?  Do you have to take up the cross of suffering for the betterment of the whole?  Looks like we do.  But at least then we can deny the blind following of convention.

I try to call my mom every day.  Does that make me a mama's boy?

I guess you've got to look forward, you know.  Nice young lady who comes to sing and play gypsy swing took the time to give me a few pointers on singing.  Very pretty, in fact.  So it was like a triple pleasure...

I guess that's the thing, to be open to learning from the feminine principle...

And all the tremendous stupidity, Doctor, of trying to follow my brother's sort of dominant beer drinking ways, the frat boy legacy, it's all cost me a good amount, when that was never really me.  Sad, yes.

But I guess you live through it, and finally see the light, far later on.

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