Who knew that i would ever understand so much about a “voice crying in the wilderness”¿ Yet here i sit watching the world needlessly succumb to base emotion in service of the destruction of so many? I’m sure i could be more confused, but i’m not sure how. I was raised in a family of beautiful, quiet people, who’d prefer to stand in front of the mirror than most anything else i knew of. Mother, father, brothers and sister. I could never figure out what they saw that was so interesting, for i never saw my own face minus glasses until a short stint with contact lenses in my 30s gave me some indication of how i appeared to others - i was not terribly impressed. My youth was full with “image”, or i should say 'match the image'. I remember desperately longing for toys i saw advertised on TV; at that time there was TV, newspapers, magazines and billboards. TV was the most effective in creating my longing; even as child i could feel the emptiness of not owning what was clearly an asset to the happy well adjusted youth that, though far more handsome and much happier than i, seemed content.
I was not. The TV show “Leave it to Beaver” had siblings about my own age an older brother and a younger brother with an asshole friend of the older brother who resembled many of the people passing through my household. This show, along with “The Donna Reed Show,” “Father Knows Best,” and “My Three Sons” constituted what my world was “supposed” to resemble. The misalignment was simply an opening to the commercials that occupied a larger and larger portion of any night’s viewing until commercials were nearly 50% of the night’s viewing. The shows created a vacuum, that was filled by the products for sale; “trouble with your girlfriend" - it’s because you stink if you don’t use this product;” trouble in your marriage, “it is because your trash is overflowing and your neighbors are looking down on you for your ‘stink’, "losing at work, it is because you are too tense and need to spruce up your ‘cool factor’ by smoking Winston cigarettes.” There was nothing in your life that could not be resolved by the right purchase.
Except that you were stuck with the same unfeeling, obnoxious relatives that never seemed to respond to the platitudes you could find in “Dennis the Menace,” or overcome your adversary the same way James West managed in “Wild, Wild West.” Nothing you saw on television quite matched what you saw in real life, except maybe the murder to John F Kennedy, or the Watts Riots. Even as a young child you could hear the hatred people expressed for anyone or anything different than the carefully cultivated yards, and outfits people wore to adhere to the visions they were viewing on the TV screen. It wasn’t until i was 40 years old, nearly 50 years after the hero of WWII, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died that i learned he was unable to walk and that he served a large portion of his presidency from a wheelchair. This is the same power of deception that allows a billionaire to steal my country out from under the nose of some 380,000,000 ‘mericans.
Sadly, i’ve come to the conclusion that there is little i can do to protect anyone from such deceit. I am still climbing out from under the delusion that my family is justified in their antagonism toward me, or more importantly - that i am neutral in the equation. I, like any other human faced with a determined foe, have “cut them off at the knees,” figuratively speaking. That cannot be easy for a group of vain persons who suckled at the tit of my young worship. As a child, my elder siblings were the epitome of all that was good and right in the world. My younger brother benefitted from all the attention i did not receive from them, which i mostly bestowed on him, because it seemed right. From where i stand now, having pulled away nearly every early reinforcement of that previous family dynamic, i cannot imagine how disconcerting it is to look into what was once the face of all my powers of reverence and succor to find - very little ·
That is my responsibility - to locate in my heart what was once great warmth and admiration and to now provide support where i can · it is little different than what i undertook when i realized what a troubled woman my own mother was and how little she regarded my wellbeing. I was faced with believing her rage, or seizing my own soul and determining the path of my own feelings, regardless of the pain that that might cause me. It is not a complicated equation. She is now ready to die and though in reality, her interest in my wellbeing is nothing i may ever understand - my only responsibility is to honor her efforts as best as i can understand them. It is the same for my brethren · regardless of how abysmally they have behaved toward me, my only recourse is to find ways to accept them wholly and completely for who they are and what they represent to my destiny, however remote that relationship might be; may you go in peace; i am sorry, please forgive me, i love you - thank you ·
jts 16/08/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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