Place of Refuge

Place of Refuge

29 April 2011

However

Did you watch it?

Did you get up at whatever
ungodly hour
and watch that wedding?
 
I didn't; I slept
right through it.

I've seen far too many
"royal" weddings
to be impressed.  I know
too well
the pain that even,
and perhaps especially,
"royals" impose upon 
each other.

Marriage truly is
a sacrament;
it truly should be blessed
and reserved
for the sacred few
who feel the highest form of love,
that form of love that can endure
every possible hardship and disappointment.

Marriage should be outlawed
in cases wherein the couples
are together out of
lust,
crush,
greed,
need,
hunger,
anger,
or whatever other lurid
motivation hidden
behind most marriage vows.


Ultimately, then,
it would seem
marriage is only for
the elder,
the more experienced,
or the weak-in-the-head;
so rarely do
young people who
wed have that type of love.


But then I watched
The Wedding
about ten hours
after the fact;
I knew I would see it
everywhere
again and again, and
every Blogger would have something to say about it.

My something to say about it
would be the entry that comes after this.

However,

I always hope for

However,

especially when it comes to love,
especially when it comes to honesty.

And when I saw Kate & William
tonight, I was touched,
and I thought,
and I wonder:

Could they be the 
"HOWEVER"
for our current age

?






The Age of Narrative Interruptus (a channelling)



Why do we take delight  and more delight
in songs   
stories
movies

that end abruptly?  that don't give closure?

. . . the song that melts away
on the lingering chord 
unresolved?


. . . . the story that does not tell us
that we live happily ever after?  But in-

stead leaves us
                   midsentence
                               midaction
                                       midthought
                              mid deed (?)

(or even before the deed; think:
Raymond Carver,

that dear, dear man who many fiction writers today
love to hate, but, well,
I not only still like his writing,
I also still have great respect
for him.

I actually knew him, he and his wife,
Tess Gallagher,
were my neighbors 
for a few years while
     I lived and studied
in Syracuse.

Notably, I studied Creative Writing there,
which of course is what Ray taught - 
I was in the graduate program
he was part of,
but, also notably,
the year I got there, Carver
got something like a MacArthur, 
and well,
what self-respecting writer really wants to teach
when they don't really have to?
He stopped teaching the year I arrived.

Anyway, it didn't matter, I was so clueless:
I went to Syracuse because I wanted to be a writer,
and not
because I knew anything about the teachers there.
In fact, I didn't know who he was the first time I met him
at a party, and I think that may be why 
he always sort of followed my work
for a few years (until they moved);
he would go to my readings, and talk to me
at parties, and give me all kinds of suggestion.
Looking back at it, I can see he 
kind of took care of me, 
in a very quiet way.
I paid him little heed; I was way
way
too in awe.

So anyway --
think Raymond Carver story. . .



OK,
back to my point about why
we take delight and more delight
in songs,
stories
movies

that end abruptly.

Well,

the Age we have been leaving has been
a Narrative Age,
and the age we have been entering,
rather haltingly and painfully,
but now we are absolutely in it,
is the Age
of Narrative Interruptus.


lastwordonnothing


The Age of Narrative was an age
that sought and sometimes found
happiness in its endings.

The "Happy Ever After" marks
Satisfaction and/or
the Desire for Satisfaction coupled with
the Belief
that Satisfaction is possible.

Since this is the Age we are currently exiting
we have inherited a truckload
of Happy Ever After Tales
that promote and perpetuate
a rather stilted view of the world.

IE:
  • if you are good, Santa will bring you packages;
  • if you clean inside your ears, beans won't grow in them;
  • if you make a lot of money, you'll be happy;
      • (a subnarrative of this one is: money can buy happiness -- if you believe this, just think about how much money it takes to be happy all the time); 
  • if you're a blonde, you're stupid and easily pleased
  • if you a marry a particular type of person just like you, you'll be happy
  • marriage and reproduction are the ONLY routes to happiness
The list goes on:
essentially,
they're all mini narratives, all with
happy endings built right into them,
and we grew up using them
to define our paths in life.


But Hot Damn!
Most of us who are my age
                                  (that's 425, remember)
and over have learned
through this rather miserable experience
called life
that those lovely stories, produced by people
whose time, circumstances & personal beliefs
allowed them to think in terms of happy endings,
are lies.

Lies.


Life happens like this:







(and then it's over)

As we have come to understand this
is the true structure of
life in our time,
our stories --
and the literal structure of all of the stories
that we use to help us understand life
has gradually changed.

We prefer
Narrative Interruptus,
because
that is more true to reality.

~ ~ ~


~ ~ ~
It has taken art: aka:
reality's reproduction
a long time to catch up to reality itself.

Reality is this, this life
we lead, and
within this life we lead,
we Humans  were produced by the Creative Force
(aka: Allah, God, Yahweh)
to be the chroniclers & recorders
of the Force's creation,
to be the ones
to show that fabulous creation S/He produced
to the Master
who produced us.
It is our job to mimic all that we encouter
for the enjoyment
of our Progenitor.
(Yes, we are advanced apes,
we are the ones
in all the animal species
to be given the task of
going forth and finding
a way to show the beauty of nature
to the Creative Force
we call God.

That's our job.

Period.

(and, by the way, every now and then God wants to see this creation,
and that, my friends, is Makropoulos' explanation
of Two Thousand And Twelve:
that year marks the juncture
at which God is able to view
The Creation in its entirety,
and,
well,
we'll see what S/He thinks.

In other words, 2012 marks the end moment of the period of time it takes
(when measured in our realm of time)
for the timeless to be able to perceive
of everything it has produced
for the soul purpose of being able to view Itself.
 Eternity, then,
is best defined as a number, and it looks
like this:

fameisn'teverything

After 2012 (which fundamentally marks
the end of the period of time as it is measured in the realm of time
that it takes the timeless to perceive
of the timed)
we'll know how long infinity is,
and we'll be able to use that #
in actual counting, because
at that point
we'll have experienced an eternity
and come out the other side of it.
I'm not kidding!
That's what
12/21/12
will be:
the realization of the year
of the palindrome,
and the realization of the Perfect Mirror Image.



But I should get back to my point, which is
we live currently at the Dawn of the
Age of Interruptus,
during which our primary mode
of representing ourselves to ourselves
will be
by fragmentation.



Life
is
not
one
long
thin
con
tin
u
a
l
thread, no

it is interruption.


We believe no more
in the Aristotelean narrative,

because we know it is no longer
a complete narrative that fits our time.

No.

Our current life narratives acknowledge the short
ness and the changability
of real lived life.

One of the most compelling stories to us
right now,
unfortunately,
is the one that shows how
if you hurt the one you love the most
you can absolutely destroy them,
thereby
robbing them of the possibility of their own happy ending,
when we know darned well we're not going to have a happy ending.

And so we kill,
and kill,
and kill,
and kill,
and lie
and lie,
then kill
and kill
and kill
again.

It is the acting out of our personal discovery
that not every one of life's stories
do not have happy endings, and
it brings happy endings to no one,
and death, painful death
to all.

But the fact is:
endings are often not happy;
endings
are often not even


endings.




We live in the Age of Narrative Interruptus.





28 April 2011

Superman in the News

As usual, 
I woke up this morning
to the news on the radio,
and this is what I heard about:


It appears that perhaps some fans
(or maybe Superman himself)
as if forced to desperate means
like Barack Obama
(
 )
,

took it upon themselves to prove
Superman's rightful birthplace.
Someone went and stole
this plaque, from its home


The state of this earth
is definitely a troubled one,
when even comic book heros
renounce their birthplace
and/or
it comes up for debate.

But perhaps we should take our cue
from the man from Krypton,
and recognized that national identity can sometimes limit
our perceptions of both ourselves and of others.

We are all,
after all,
citizens of the universe,
citizens of the galaxy,
citizens of the solar system,
citizens of this third planet 
from this sun,
we are all 
in this together.


26 April 2011

25 April 2011

The Audacity of Hopefulness

Hi.
Sorry I've been away for a little while.

The other day I was getting dressed,
and I looked down at the books that were
 holding my bedroom door open,
and this one was on top:


That's right,
it's been holding my door open,
for nearly a year.
And as I saw it there, I felt a pang
of grief and regret,
because I really do believe that Barack Obama is both 
hopeful and audacious,
underneath it all,

and then I wrote the following post:

I want to live in the country where
Barack Obama is president, and nobody
criticizes him for not fixing
in two years
the mess made by all the presidents we've had
for thirty years
(give or take a decade or two)

I want to live in a place where people
are only held accountable for what 
they themselves have done, 
no more, no less,
and where
they are not judged for what they haven't done,
when they haven't finished the job
yet.

I want to live in a land
of reason and clarity
and truth,
not to mention a good sense of humour,
a place where, if someone lies,
their nose turns red,
or their hair falls out,
and everyone immediately knows
they are a liar.
Sometimes I think:
the worst offense that somone can commit
in civil society 
is to lie.


I saw a movie a couple years ago, with Ricky Gervaise in it;
it was called The Invention of Lying.
The friend who was with me really didn't like it;
as many of the critics seem
to have not liked it; but
I did like it.

It treated the whole issue of lying
like a parable, and the end conclusion
appeared to be a few things:
a) people are gullible
b) you can tell people anything, and they'll 
believe you.


Of course, it also begins in a world
where all people are truthful; 
indeed, at the beginning of the film,
no one can even conceive of someone who lies.

And in this world of comical honesty,
a character discovers the power of 
falsehood.  If you live in a world
where people are honest, and you lie, well,
they'll believe you.

The liar in the movie becomes
famous and walthy, espeically when he
and tells here there's a heaven,
when he really has no clue
what comes after this life.

The film really celebrates
the concept of 
"what you don't know won't
hurt you,"  and that's just fine
and dandy, as long as it's something simple
like the tooth fairy.

The film is correct
on many points:
people are fundamentally
gullible and truthful,
so you can indeed lie to them
and gain power of them
to varying degrees.

And for awhile, in the world of lies,
all is fine, while the lie
maintains the impression of a perfect world,
that is,
until the lie is revealed to be a lie.

And then he or she or those
who have been lied to
is shattered,
and may even start lying, too,
and society itself becomes a maze
of mirrors and poses where
pretense is the only way to survive.


And the only way to see the truth,
is by distorting it.

I'm sorry, but I"m here to declare,
we've reached 
- and bypassed -
our critical limit of lying.


Only the truth can set us free now.




The biggest lie
you can tell
is the lie you tell
to your inner self,
and the lies you tell
to the ones who love you,
and whom you love,
too.
Start by telling the truth to them.



17 April 2011

Howwwl


The night wind howls 
around my house,
and I - like one entombed
in the lungs of that howling man -
cannot sleep.

For eight hours, then,
I lie and shivver,
hearing every last shudder and splinter
of the wind and the wood.

The moan of the elements
becomes my own moaning;
the power and force of it
rattling my house,
my power,
and yet I know it can engulf
and destroy
me and all I own,
reclaim me to the yawing soul
of the abyss.



Morning comes,
radio on,
I learn 

April showers used to bring 
May flowers,
this year they bring
just the cold of the tomb.

Then the story on the radio changes,
and we're back
to the same old bickerings in the U.S. Senate,
the same old wars and revolutions,
humanity navelgazing --

How deaf we are to the voice of our mother,
begging us, pleading us
to pay heed to each other.




May this week pass peacefully.

16 April 2011

Squeezing the Hours


I'm just squeezing the hours
of each day,
trying to find spare time
like a spare dime --
neither are worth much anymore,
and yet,
they're worth a lifetime.


That spare moment I can call my own
is what I seek
when I can even consider
this space
of Makropoulos:
the Makro pulos
makro polis
of the internet
where we all masquerade
as our true selves.


This is truly me.

The woman I wear every day
when I go off to work
is a facade I've developed over the decades -
she's a personality I've honed & developed,
and lordy lordy,
is she a hard worker.

But she's getting so tired,
as the years, decades, half centuries
centuries
wear on;
and all she wants to do
is expire
and let the true me
do the work I do best.


Well, well,
my dear internet friends --
give me another week or two, 
and I'll be back full force.

This has been a tough year;
a really tough year.

I hope it's been easier on you--

13 April 2011

the face I wear





the face I wear,
I didn't choose,
so why do you judge me by it?

the color of my hair,
too,
came with this machine,
this avatar,
I found myself trapped within at birth,
so why make jokes about it?



my body too, was not my fault,
and I didn't buy my skin 
color in a bottle on a shelf


I gained them all
the same way you gained yours:

it was an accident of birth.

For some it's lucky;
for some it's not;

our challenge is to see beyond
and behind
the superficial artifices
we face everyday,
and find the fellow soul
beneath.



It's not my fault,
the way I look to you;


I only wish you
would give me a chance
to be not the person you think I am,
but rather the person
I long to be.
 

12 April 2011

Oh, Japan

Every morning 
I wake up
to more news
about Japan.
This morning,
I heard that their nuclear disaster was ranked as equal
to Chernobyl.
After hearing that,
I went to work distressed,
and I remained upset until I came to work,
where, by chance,
I Stumbled upon this lovely video:


We are all one--

Please, give to any fund to help the people of Japan
(and Haiti, and Egypt, and Libya, and everywhere . . . )

09 April 2011

Makropoulos on Makropulos



The only problem with
Janacek's Makropulos Affair
is that it is not the original.
In fact, Janáček
took the opera and made it
as much about him as it was about
me,
Elina Makropoulos,



just as some crazy blogger
might take my story
and make it as much about her
as it is about
me,
Elina Makropoulos.

This past week, I decided to reread the play that some might claim 
was my origin, and I want to comment on it,
for a line or two or three,
or more.

I think it is unfair to the playwright that the opera appears to get produced
far more than his play does.  And the play, quite frankly, is very good,
and very timely, indeed.

The author, Karel Čapek
(and I've made it a point to represent his name correctly -- it appears that his last name,
if represented and pronounced correctly, would sound like "chapik" more or less.)
was, in no uncertain terms, a visionary.  His play about me
 reminds me of some of the details that I had forgotten,
and even misrepresented, here in my blog.  So, to begin, 
I would like to correct them:

In both the opera and the play it appears the actual origin of my 
perpetual eternal state of youth is explained as this:
my father was the alchemist for Emperor Rudolf II
of Greece, and the Emperor wanted a formula for
eternal life.  My father obliged.  The Emperor demanded, though,
that my father try the formula out on me, and he did. I was in a coma for
a week, and then woke up and that was that.  I was altered, and began to experience the comings and goings of every dear person that I ever loved. 
Now, according to Janáček's
libretto, I ran off with the formula, and began my operatic career.  It appears to me
that the opera is a bit more deliberate in making me want eternal life.
 
And of course: why wouldn't one want
eternal life?   This, of course, was the question that intrigued my dear
Mr. Čapek.  The poor man, after all, was nearly a cripple 
all of his life, and hopelessly in love with a woman who perhaps 
he also even feared.  Lucky for him, he did marry her, in his 40's,
and I sincerely hope he found some kind of joy with her before he died,
so young, right on the brink of the Second World War.

And why wouldn't one want eternal life?  For a time,
I adored it, and I adored the different men who fell
at my feet.  In a nutshell, everyone thought 
I was pretty "hot."  And the beauty of experiencing life
and love more and more in a body that does not age
is that one gains a knowledge and certainty
that shines in the eyes, and makes one's ever-youthful body
all the more attractive.  Yes, for a time, one 
Elina Makropoulos had the time
of her endless life -- men fell at my feet;
women, too, and occasionally I suffered
the side-effect called pregnancy 
and children.  So there are bastards
aplenty
that might be credited to me.
To keep them from being able to find me,
I kept on changing my name.  Always
E.M.,
but a different name every fifty years
or so, to defray suspicion.  Dear Mr. Čapek's play
spills the beans, so to speak, telling the tale of a century's old property suit
that only I know the solution of.
(As of right now I realize that it is pretty wrong to claim my name is
Emilia Marty, the name I had in 1922, but instead just 
admit it is Elina Makropoulos, 
which is the most honest I can be short of 
giving the name of this crazy bitch who claims
she is me, and who also feels she has lived
for an eternity, and I will also tell you:
she is right.  This woman who claims my name has lived forever,
and will live forever, as will I,
in these words I write here.)
 
 
 But what does one lose if one lives forever?
One loses one's humanity.
Emilia Marty is not a nice woman, but men
do overlook it because she is beautiful; they fall
in love with her, but she does not care.
 
(Rather, I should say "I" -- it is so disorienting to speak 
of one's self in the Third Person.
But one does it on Facebook,
so I will continue to do so
here.)

She is a bit like the robots in Čapek's other visionary play:
R.U.R.  Ah, now that's a masterpiece, a play
worth producing today, a play about robots; in fact, Čapek coined the term
"robot."  His robots in R.U.R. are manufactured
to make human life easier -- 
and they are manufactured in absolute
human form, some even manufactured in the likeness
of beloved humans.  One such robot is made to look
as beautiful as the beautiful Helen, only for her creator to realize:
 "She's half asleep!  How can she be beautiful
if she does not know how to love?  It makes me shudder to look
at her -- I've created a cripple!"

That line from R.U.R. could be very easily moved to the Makropulos Case,
where  the eternal Emila/Elena is about as human as a robot, 
indeed -- in her drudging trudge through eternity,
she - or should I say I - loses her capacity
to love.  Each day and each love
is as dry and stale as sawdust.
Only her singing retains a trace of love,
as it wells up from a heart
that has ached a thousand times --


This strikes me as so relevant to humanity's condition today:
here we are so mechanized, and so reliant on machines,
we have lost our hearts.  As we march toward
the looming spectre of the cyborg and the Singularity,
one might say of this,  what Čapek's character Domin says of the robots:
"They say they're on a higher evolutionary plane
than man.  More intelligent, stronger.  Man is just 
their parasite . . .!"  In so-called First World Countries today,
we humans have become so wedded to our technology
that we have lost our sense of community, and with it
our hearts.  As we strive, with our medical advancements,
towards trying to attain eternal life, we overlook the importance
of love and the momentary pleasure.  

Do humans really want to be eternal?  And here I must quote
myself, Elina Makropulos, in the play dubbed by my name:
"People never get better.  Nothing changes, nothing.
Nothing matters, nothing happens.  
Shootings, earthquakes, the end of the world -- nothing!
You're here, and I'm somewhere far, far away, three hundred years away!
If only you knew how easy your lives are!"

(And why, you may ask, would a 425 year old woman
damned to eternal life,
say your lives are easy?)
 
"You're close to things.  Everything means something! 
Everything has value in the few short years of life,
so of course you live it to the full. . . . 
Fools, you're so happy!  It's disgusting to see you so happy!
And all because of the stupid accident that you'll soon be dead!
. . . . Everyone, everyone believes in something. 
What a life, you fools!  What a wonderful life!"


We try so hard to exceed ourselves, to become eternal,
but perhaps, dear friends, we've reached
our limits.  Perhaps, dear friends,
as the world seems to crumble around us,
and technology looms, threatening the end of humanity,
we need to embrace that one thing
that makes us human:
we are living, dying entities
who can find meaning in the short space of time
during which we inhabit this wonderful place
called earth.  And the greatest meaning we can 
find is the meaning the robots found at the end
of Mr. Čapek's R.U.R. , in a world where it appears
robots have overpowered all:
 
"Friends, life will not vanish, love will endure!
From love comes life, naked and tiny, taking root
in the wilderness.  Houses and machines will disintegrate.
The names of the great will whither like leaves.
Only love will bloom in the emptiness, 
casting the seeds of life to the wind."
 


And Makropoulos will live forever,
because at this stage of her life,
this stage of life she has attained 
after gaining the knowledge of the preciousness of death,
she has nothing left to embody
except that love that promises eternal life.

04 April 2011

A Purge on Education in the U.S. of A. (to William Cronan)


Is it Armageddon yet?

As you may know, if you read my blog,
(and if you read this blog, I thank you
for your patience!)
that is my current refrain.


Every morning I wake up listening to the news on 
(that nasty radio station that the U.S. Government recently voted
to cut funding from (see link above)

and every morning I hear another story
that makes me think,
before I even get out of bed:
"is it Armageddon yet?

I mean, really, 
what do we need to have happen before
we realize that it's time for us
to take responsibility for
the human race, as it sits at this
this challenging historical juncture
we currently are experiencing?



This morning the story was this:



This friendly looking gentleman,
a certain Professor William Cronan,
a historian at the University of Wisconsin,
was asked by the New York Times
to write an op-ed 
on the history of the State of Wisconsin's Collective Bargaining laws.


A day or so later,
he launched a blog that he had been thinking
about for some time, called

And there, he wrote an entry on,
to use his words,
"the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in influencing recent legislation in this state and across the country"
(please see the link above for his own
description of, again as he puts it,
"the strange circumstances in which [he] finds [him]self as a result."
Fundamentally, the State of Wisconsin
did not like was Dr. Cronan wrote,
and "request[ed] to view the contents of "Professor William Cronon's state email account from 1 January 2011 to present which reference any of the following terms: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union [and 12 prominent Republican state senators who supported Walker's bill]".  (this quote is from the Guardian article
from which I snagged the above picture.  Please follow the link above.)

Now, all in all,
I find this to be tremendously 
disturbing,
for a number of reasons:

First, of course, there is that good ol' constitutional right we supposedly have
in the U.S. of A. called Freedom of Speech.  Yes, the same Constitution
that grants us the right to own a small arsenal, also grants us the right
to speak openly.  Indeed, that is our first
Constitutional Right, followed closely by

 This very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution is one of the many reasons
that for a long time historians and social critics called the United States of America
one of history's greatest social experiments.


My Second Reason for finding this Cronan case
to be absolutely disturbing is because of what it indicates
about the attitude towards Education and the Educated
in this great old United States of America.

Of course, Wisconsin's current place in national headlines began
when their governor, Scott Walker, managed to pass a legislation designed
to disrupt the collective bargaining power of unions for public employees, including teachers.
(This has been followed by the Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich,
launching a similar attempt to "bust the unions,"
something that my family and friends in Ohio claim he never campaigned on.
The rationale for breaking the power of these unions
that serve public employees is that these individuals
are overpaid anyway, and hey we have to balance
those state budgets, which are,
pretty much like the United States government,
flirting with bankruptcy.

This attempt to dismantle the pay structure, which includes threatening the retirement
funds for thousands of individuals who have been sweating over our youth for decades
is being fueled by an anecdotal public claim that teachers don't do their jobs well,
and get their summers off, so why pay them 
so much????  After all, look at the state of American education!
It's the teachers' fault our youth are doing so badly, right?

Well, I'll tell ya what:
some of my best friends are teachers
in public systems,
and those people work their hearts out:
facing increasing learning disabilities and disruptions in the classroom,
working in often poorly funded facilities,
up early to prepare and greet students who often come
from emotionally challenging family situations,
up until late, late hours doing assessment paperwork,
struggling to get students to pass tests on material that the students
rather rapidly forget . . . the list goes on.   We don't need to take money and job security
away from most of these teachers, 
we need to make them all saints.

Education is the sole most important industry in the United States right now,
if we are to produce intelligent, creative and open-minded global citizens for tomorrow,
and we are yanking money away from it,
and belittling those who do it,
and those who question the system
and want to make it better.

Sadly, those students who were impacted by the
No Child Left Behind Legislation,
which is largely responsible for the current emphasis
on assessment in our country, are now arriving in
colleges and universities, which of course,
is where I teach, and have taught,
since 1985.
The students themselves realize
rather rapidly
that their high school education did not prepare them.
(I have a student right now working on that topic
for the researched argument he is required to write.
His colleagues all agree with him.)

So if High School doesn't prepare you for college today, what does it do?
I asked him today.
It teaches you to take tests,
was his response.  And, he added It's a zoo!  Too much
of a popularity contest.   His classmates
all nodded in agreement.
The United States of America has, historically, housed the finest Higher Education system
in the world.  This is why we have attracted scholars from all over the world.
This is also why, for a time, American scholars like myself got jobs in universities
in other countries.  It was our job to import that unique brand of
"critical thinking" that has become the hallmark of the American system for over the past
thirty to forty years.

Recognizing that honing the ability to think critically and creatively
produces new thoughts and advancements in every branch
of thinking, scholars have come to our shores, and now
we are exporting our education, at a profit to our 
institutions of higher education.
It is precisely in the spirit of good ol' American
critical thinking that the good Dr. Cronan
developed his blog,
and it is precisely that practice 
that the State Government of Wisconsin
is threatening by demanding his e-mails.


As my fingers move on this keyboard, I worry
even for myself.  I know from my own current
experiences, (I have taught abroad, and I am currently teaching
both American college students
and Chinese students who are here for their first
year abroad) that the rest of the world is surpassing us,
quickly, in terms of general knowledge as well as
critical and creative thinking, not to mention
a mastery of the English language.)  And we,
meanwhile, are busy creating a system that 
distrusts Academics and Educators on all levels.

And our young people are suffering from it.

Well, I say,
God Bless you, Dr. Cronan;
fight for your right
for personal freedom.
I will support you unabashedly,
and pray that we can all wake up
right now, and see
we've gone too far.
We have to give up these old
worn out partisan battles
and set our priorities straight.
Right?

Or may it is Armageddon,
at least for the U.S.A.,
now.

02 April 2011

4/1/2011 - 4/2/2011



So
I had a guy in my life
once
who was kind of like a psychopath;
I don't know
if he truly was one,
but he was
an awful lot like one.

He would mirror
back to me
(or you or anybody)
exactly what we want to see
EXACTLY
to a 
"T"

And I was able to hold
his attention
for over two years,
which meant that
for about a year --
                      maybe a little more--
he actually found some interest or
challenge,
or maybe even enjoyed
mirroring me back
to me;
and I had this crazy belief that,
in the midst of that time,
I penetrated the surface and found and connected with
the man underneath


And he was pretty darned extraordinary
and I still believe
in a sick, sad way
that he thought I was extraordinary
too.

I will honestly tell you:
I had never been
so happy
in my life.  Foolishly, I thought
I could make it last

forever.


But when the man you give your love to
is actually
the man deep inside
the mirror,
you have to realize
he
is constantly receding,
because in this world comprised
solely of representations
the mirror
dominates
over the
original


                                . . . and so

every other woman
who sees this man
also sees
herself the way
she would like
to see herself,
and she wants him for her very own;
and if he's living
continually
in his Mirror Stage,
well,
he's very rarely in contact
with the true he,
he's just continually infatuated
with the perfect he
that he thinks he can see whenever
 a woman thinks she has fallen
head over heels in love
with him.


Still,
there has to be a man in the mirror,
a man who on this earthly domain
was given the deadly deed
of having to be the mirror-bearer,
he whose essence
is that mystical 3rd that God created
for the sole purpose
of being able to see
HimSelf.




OK,
honestly,
this is a pretty wild entry here,
but I'm going to ride it out

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 So
how many women fall so
in love (as much in love as I did) with
their psychopath lover?

I'd say almost all of them;
or most of them

So what                                               
is
                                          the
big fucking deal?

There is no deal:
there never was:
for two years, I stood
in front of a
beautiful mirror
and learned to love myself.




Tomorrow
would be
my father's birthday,
had he lived,

but as we all know:
Makropoulos is 425 years old,
so her father,
has long since mingled
with the earth he loved,
with the water he loved,
with the trees he wouldn't cut down,
not even for Christmas:

My father,
the most beautiful man
I will ever know:
tall and slender
and blonde
and quiet; smart
and witty
(I was the one who always got his jokes)
subtle,
and kind,
and so misunderstood,
my
               dear
                dear
father,
I've only just passed the age
he was at when he died,
or so it seems,
as he's been gone
such a long
long
long
time.
It's been hundreds of years
since I saw him last,
and I was just really getting
to know him.

                  Yes,

I loved my father
very much,
and I do believe
he loved me too.


                                                          He just never said it
                                                                       out loud.

artsjournal


And then there was another man:
the man I was married to, many years ago,
he
was 20 years my senior,
I married him
when he was at the age my father was
when he died.

People said to me:
you married a father figure,
and I said:
no! I did not!

He didn't look a think like my father, and
he was shorter than him, and
he could see color
and play the piano.

My father
was tone deaf,
and could only see red.



But I will tell you something
which
I recently discovered
(or came to terms with)
:

Yes.
I did marry my husband
to replace my father, and I am here to tell you:
the biggest
mistake a woman could make
if in a position even vaguely similar
to the one I was in when I married
would be to marry a man
who is the opposite of her father.  Women

make their men
in to the man
they want him to be.
And if the woman is lucky,
the man
is amenable to it.

If a woman feels
she met the perfect man
in her father, well, she tries
to make the man in her life
into her conception of her father.

That is why, quite frankly,
if a woman must marry,
and if she loved her father,
she should marry a man who is like her father,
in looks and temperment,
because if her father is really
a wonderful man (as my father was)
then the man you've chosen
to mold into him won't mind it at all,
and won't mind reflecting him back to you.


Does this mean I agree with Freud, when he said
that every girl and every boy
wants to have sex
with their father and/or mother?

No.

A girl can love her father without wanting to bed him,
and visa versa, just as a boy
can love his parent in the same way.
There is a true paternal love, a love
that adores the daughter
but does not cross that line;
and there is a true daughterly love,
a love that adores
her father, and adores
him all the more
because she knows she is safe with him.

But when it comes to a boyfriend,
a reproduction will suit her fine.
There's no sin in that;
there's not sin in wanting to love your mate
with the same excessive love that a child
once harbored for their parent who was their absolute world.

And if that man (or other mate of whatever gender)
is of like temper,
and seeks to love a woman
with the same adoration that he once
directed solely towards his mother,
well,
they're a match made in heaven.

Soulmates?

Maybe.

That's really another element all together.

Yes, there's no sin in that, because
if we could all find a partner
who we can love with the same love we felt
for the person we loved absolutely most in our lives,
well,
this would be a pretty happy planet,
and would spin
in an energy of
healing bliss.

But alas,
that's not the way the world turns, instead
we live in the tug of war of
users, abusers
used, abused,
passive-aggressive
active complacent
passive passive
active active

and every gradation in between.

Indeed
Indeed.

And we fight and we bicker,
and we flaunt flirt and hurt,
and we ignore the beautiful
simplicity of truth right before
our eyes.

Indeed
Indeed.

(Is it Armageddon yet?)

If it is,
well perhaps
we should
give up our
petty hatreds
now, and love
with a love that exceeds,

like a child loves his mother or her father,
or whomever it was
who once made that child
oh so glad, just to be
alive.