I don’t like being played - however the only logical foundation for that feeling is a conflict within myself about playing others · Madame Paradox is a bitch, then you die. I prefer the straightforward to the roundabout, when someone says “can you do this for me¿”, but what they mean is “will you do this for me?” Women are masters of this duplicity, and i’ve come to believe it is because they have learned to view their brothers with contempt for the ease with which we are manipulated. My anima, for the longest time has mimicked, often poorly this double standard by inferring my wants through artifice and guile, rather than face the frontal assault of “please” and then to live with the yes or no. But i am getting better, i often do not ask for much, rather let the gravity of “what happened” serve as a confirmation of my own predisposition. I find that i so misunderstand the world and lack fundamental confidence in my own ______fill in the blank, it is easier to accept outcomes not directly of my making than to place myself in the breech of intention and say full front to the universe this _____fill in the blank, is what i want.
I am not complaining about my strategy for it has left me fairly free to pursue those avenues of curiosity which the opinion of others often impairs, and it has forced me to carefully consider that which i desire, for there is no external agency with whom to conspire, but that of my own wants. I do not want much - i’ve gotten that far, but what i want, i want strongly. I want to be cared for, in the same manner that i find i have found myself capable of caring for others; and it is a weird mix to be sure. I once sat on a plane with a stranger whom i subsequently included in an seemingly endless pilgrimage of letters to my Mother with whom i had once again become estranged from. My thinking was that i did not want to say anything to my mother which i could not also openly express to a woman who had entirely captivated my imagination in a 4 hour flight out of Bali. At the time I was living an entirely isolated life in high desert of California and it seemed to be the most constructive use of that time.
I have no regrets nor shame for selling my house at the end of that 3 year retreat and flying to Paris to confirm the reality of my fantasies. Whether i punked out, or she did; we’ll never know, for when she explained that she and he would be out of town from - to, and i said “good i will call you then to rendezvous, but that is the only call i will make,” she did not pick up and i moved on. I am donkey like that; it has been pointed out to me by professionals that the i lose the “forest for the trees,” but i have yet to be cured of my weirdness after decades of what can only be described as extremely lucrative assistance from them, so i figure i must be suffering from terminal weirdness and so seek my tribe to die with, or at least near; though they remain in hiding, i am hopeful, for that is a unique symptom of my particular malady.
I gather from having been shunned by my family on FB and in real life that they believe my illness to be contagious; it may just be my weirdness, not the outward manifestation of hope, which i can’t seem to shake. My father was a high school cheerleader which for the year 1940 was not all that unusual, but for the pre-Dallas Cheerleaders of my generation his history gave me great pause. Now i have come to understand it was simply Pop being Pop to the core - he a tireless advocate of human potential, and that excellent example has truly been infectious. But not without its controversy; at his wake when my sister pronounced in a passing eulogy that “he embarrassed all of us” and i could only but interrupt, “No, he challenged us.” I would apologize to my sister for interrupting her misery, but that would only further confirm her myopic estimation of me as “victim” an insight she is not entirely entitled to, but one which i can empathize with for its inherent projection; another feature of our shared malady.
I do not blame Ma for her cruelty, or Pop for his, however much misunderstood, inexhaustible optimism. They were and are human beings having done their best, and to whom i will remain eternally grateful. Now it is our time to vacate the field with as much good effort as we can muster for the benefit of the “greater good,” not because that is how i was raised to roll which i was, but because it is the only right way to roll. I cannot say what comes next, and am beginning to understand that that is not my call to make - the only options before me are how to eliminate from my life that which does not aid my ambition for personal happiness as best i can fathom what that means, and to eliminate as much of my own contribution to the collective misery of those with whom i share this miraculous moment in time. We are in the midst of an eternity, and if that means we can put some small spin on that existential ball in favor of just that much more love and kindness, i’m all in; “but when you talk about destruction, Don’t you know you can count me out.” - John Lennon
jts 20/09/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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