Today 19 July 2020 is ma’s 92 birthday - Hapy Birtday Ma · so you know if i had my way, i’d be sitting at your side fetching what you can’t, but by your own design and the bizarre interpretation of your wishes by those you placed in charge, i am as far removed as is possible and as quiet as a mouse · at least where you’re concerned. You’ll be glad to know your unerring discernment remains entirely accurate and even today where i live, there are those, i am sure, would rather i dummy up than remain the same old “mouth” as you disparagingly called me to anyone who would listen. But i gotta tell ya’ ma, that was a really mean thing to do, especially to me who loves you, after what Leonard Cohen describes as “bitter searching of the heart. Yes, i am intractable when it comes to expressing myself - ironically, this trait seems in short supply in the nation pop fought to defend. There are secret police on the streets of our country today, jailing citizens for no more than expressing themselves · so ma, i’m glad i ignored your imprecations when it comes to saying how i feel.
Today i took possession of new digs; the house is on the other side my neighbors - the farmers next door; they are salt of the earth people and in the hipster doofus town where i now reside it is wholesome to live close to people i can admire. I understand that you have been fortifying yourself for years against what you yourself described to me as an “inconsolable fear of death,” so kudos for your resolve in negotiating your own pace - but i gotta ask, “is it worth it”? There was a movie in the grand tradition i watched starring Lionel Barrymore - “On Borrowed Time”. The gist of it was not so much different than the trick of unweaving her day’s work which Penelope played on the suitors waiting to usurp Odysseus. I can almost see your eyes rolling back in your head, then asking, “why are you telling me this?” As with most things that pertain to you; ma, for no other reason than to render aid. If it doesn’t, at least i tried.
What i’ve discovered for myself, there is no obedient loving son, or daughter out there looking to bring me kindness as i have you; and between us, i’d think my position to be the more fortunate. I think about how you stopped picking up after yourself in your golden years - as though the privilege of having others do for you was some compensation for inequities in your life; what terrifies me is when i see this same inclination in my own living - looking at the dirty floor and saying to myself, “i can pay to have this done.” Pop was very stringent about radical accountability - unrealistically stringent · so i welcome the kindness toward yourself that you arrived at late in life; i am searching for a middle ground to a point where i can be pitching in and contributing to my dying day. Our species as i see it is at the “all hands on deck stage” where we cannot really carry dead weight. I learned, possibly too late to be of any use to you, just how shy you are about what you are feeling.
I value you your unusually sensitive nature, but i do not concur with all the conclusions you arrive at; i might have been a better son, had i defended my positions as fiercely as you have learned to defend yours. Or, because there was no one backing me up in family squabbles i learned to see beyond the “court intrigue” and take positions that were indisputable such that i simply removed myself from the fray. The problem with that tactic is that it gets very lonely once the need to secure allies is removed and you learn to live with a take it or leave attitude toward nearly everything in life. I honestly don’t know. I miss conversing with your razor intellect and feel the world will have lost a uniquely original character when it comes time for us to bid each other adieu. It pains me to this day to feel in my heart that you are repulsed by what i’ve become as a human being, but paradoxically owe my cussed independence in large part to the terms of “individuation” that our relationship has forged.
So maybe the best place to start is with a “thank you ma” for having the gumption to create a one such as me, for whether you have ever recognize me as the loving man i have become - i don’t require any external validation of my worth · from what i see around me and what i see on the horizon there are not many who can make that claim. If anything circling-the-wagons has become the goto strategy for the choice between balkanization or solidarity our species is faced with. My own siblings lack the backbone to approach me as individuals, rather as i see it - which by no means - defines any reality but my own, they aspire to emulate the ineffable quality of self through clustering at all costs, a quality you have achieved simply by breathing and being yourself · bless you Mommy and all those you have come in contact with over your long and meaningful life. In closing, as i exited my new domicile with a complete set of keys, i also backed into a cacti hitherto outside my goofy awareness - simultaneously eliciting the kindliest cackle of derision over my shoulder one could hope for in such circumstances. When i faced my audience; she was a gapped-tooth hag with the sweetest smile of shared humor one would want to meet under similar circumstances · somehow on this birthday of yours, and as incongruous as it may seem, she reminded me poignantly of you.
Lovingly yours,
son - joseph T.
jts 19/07/2020
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