Once again the laundry is done, so the terror of having no clean underwear recedes into the future for another 19 days, baring unforeseen events. I am awash in food which feels contemptible when so much of the world is living hand to mouth. I have allowed the kindness of strangers to prevail over my own organization, and it confuses me. My last wife cooked a kettle full of vegetable soup the night of her great escape. I had been back from the hospital from an emergency appendectomy for 2 days, and preparing to work the next day. She stood over this kettle of simmering vegetables muttering to herself, “I love this man, I love this man,” and so thought little more of her declaration when she had picked me up at the hospital - “I am leaving you.” Gimping back from the Yellow Line train stop the next day, the neighbor kids trailed me from the corner asking where are you moving to?
My wife had left, and after that kettle was gone, i continued cooking variations of vegetables for the next 2 years. So when the wife of my current neighbors, the farmers, began placing dishes of prepared food in my window, it was disconcerting but also coincided with a time in my own development when i wanted to stop resisting the universe. However it has played havoc with my well developed sense of self-reliance, not to mention meal planning. The more complicated aspect of this conundrum is the effect of criticism on people’s good intentions. She i imagine is feeling compassion for a solitary stranger and as i understand it wants to relieve my suffering. I have tried to explain that i can happily manage my meals, and our arrangement has created a waste of food which i feel very badly about - to no avail. The language barrier is real, but the cultural barrier is more real.
For my birthday, i was gifted new sandals for reasons i’m not entirely clear about, but i think it was concern about my appearance because i prefer my well worn pair to the new ones i’d bought sometime back - a pair she the kind "gifter", knew nothing about. Again it is the lack of communication that is complicating matters. The individual in question could quite conceivably ask me to commit murder, which i might or might not comply with, but she has no real concept of her power of command. However, he is unable to ask me what it is i would want or need for my birthday. I am guilty of the same lack of communication and had made an extravagant gesture for her birthday the year before without verifying whether it would be useful or even desired. This lack of communication has created an imbalance i did not wish for or plan.
In the den of my scholarship, i often lose sight of the real world effect my fantasies might have. I have deluded myself into believing that as long as my intentions are pure and i honor my interior as honestly as i know how, the world and its response to my being be damned. I’m in no haste to unlearn that at a time in human history when so few are effectively controlling the wants and desires of so many. But along with that commitment to personal integrity, i struggle to listen carefully to those with whom i interact. This often results in what i understand to be “reaction formation.” My personal strategy to retire from society has left more of a footprint than i’d have thought possible, and the reaction of people being listened to has created more attention than i am comfortable with. When i say reaction formation, i mean i have also found very few who have any desire or capacity to learn about my wants or feelings, rather they view me, as i experience it, as a “Tabula Rasa” waiting for their imprint of what they imagine i am, or want.
I have curtailed my desires much, but i have not as yet satisfied my desire for a companionable partner looking for a quiet creative life; she the model/muse and proprietress of whatever we can collaboratively create, and i the errant knight struggling to comprehend and honor her quiet anima; an anima that no longer requires consumer objects to satisfy and support her desire for security, but who understands that with the years i have left and the resources i have accumulated i want nothing more than to love and cherish her gentle ways without defending her from the suitors she needs me not to repeal. I seek a helpmate to negotiate our wants and desires interdependently, rather than petition the wide world individually. I wish a couple-hood that welcomes my manic doting, and often severe solitude, someone whom i can explore with abandon, and to whom i can revel in my nakedness; at this point in my life it makes no sense to live for less.
jts 19/09/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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