My mother was big for her age and a drop-dead auburn-haired adolescent beauty in the desert of Nevada at the same time troop-trains full of WWII recruits wended their way to the front lines on rails to and from everywhere the war machine needed their expendable flesh in the fight against fascism; tell me again how there is no Madame Paradox. She married a B-17 pilot whose only kill of the war was his bombardier in the nose my father’s plane when the brakes failed while taxiing after a training mission. Years later when Pop would wake from nightmares, Ma would report this very personal experience and other judgements about my father to her children as some kind of justification for their marriage dissolution during the divorce-crazy early 1960’s ‘merica. Ma is a complex loving woman who has a heart of gold, as long you are obedient, compliant and dare not puncture her vanity with criticism - valid or not. It is from this cauldron of very real human emotion that i have tempered my determination to love at all costs, yet accept nothing but love in return.
It’s not working out real well - that’s not a complaint, just a simple truth as clearly as i can state it. I’m sure my conceit about knowing what truth is and what it is not is part of what sets her hair on fire anytime we share air; but i also believes it is what gives her confidence when i say to her, “Ma, i love you,” she gags it down with fewer grains of salt than what is necessary when listening to the other more politic members of her brood. I don’t know that even if i had the magic wand of “unconditional love” stapled to the inside of my skull i would want to be different than what i have become - as gritty as the grains of sand in the deserts of her youth · gritty, but loving; tell me again how there is no such thing as the spirit woman Madame Paradox, please; i want to fall at her feet and crawl to the nape of her neck with adoration of her supple flesh until she whimpers in loving surrender.
I who at 66 with 3 wives under my belt can still be searching for a loving other is nothing short of a miracle, but one in which i believe; that my odds are pretty good; is truly a miracle - i owe it to Ma, Pa too; because it is his language of the heart that i emulate - while it is Ma’s language of the body that i listen to. There is still much holiness in our dying world to find and with which to resonate. It is not always clear with the dissonant images demanding our attention flickering in front of our quivering fingers, but in can be done - we as a species have far more sophisticated visceral knowledge than the digital titans teasing our collapsing attention spans with pablum and saccharin dreams of multiple zeroes that has somehow come to represent power, prestige and success which are as vacant as the downtown we all hail from, but now only dream about returning to - if we ever get out of quarantine ·
The corporations must be de-coupled from the dream machine - a contraption that can only dwell within the hearts of each of us. As long as we expect deliverance from any agency, ideology or alliance that does not honor our independence and resourcefulness as thinking feeling, suffering, and loving creatures how can we expect them to fulfill any promise they make of assistance, wisdom or allegiance. It is the same for me as i size up my next mate - if she is not demanding more from me based on what she can perceive about who i am, how can i possibly turn over to her the keys to the kingdom, and ask vice versa. Why would i want to hand over my arsenal to someone who thinks so little of herself as to presume me so inept and dense as to perceive only her ravishing beauty and contrived appeal to be the extent of her luxuriant, but long suffering soul¿ that is a question for which after being cuckolded by 3 different wives i feel entitled to an honest answer - don’t you?
And then there’s Ma; and her ever ready left-turns out of nowhere - this particular afternoon it was North off of Los Alamitos into her Leisure World compound to which i was pointedly refused a gate pass during the last years of her tenancy, ostensibly because i was so scary; she turned in her seat toward me and remarked; “you know Madeleine (my last wife) only married you because of my money.” Some who have followed my misbegotten exploits for anytime, are familiar with this story, but context is everything. It is telling about what an aged parent fears for their child when making such provocative remarks; the professionals amongst us would like to attribute such an expression to “early onset dementia” and other scholarly analysis, mostly because it precludes participating in any meaningful way with the pathology of the atomic family, but for me it was as literal and historical as anything Chaucer might have imagined, only it was my mother’s horror story - not mine. I have made peace with as much of my history as pain permits, and remain lovable and worthy of admiration and respect even to one has hard-bitten as my dusty mother · what remains important is that this sad frightened woman who once confided to me her adolescent “inconsolable fear of death” would try to steel me to my future and fortify my defenses against demons that she has faced, utterly unaware that to survive i had to digest such beasts and shit them out long since - may you rest easy you fearsome woman · my Ma.
jts 28/09/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
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