I live with the parents of a family in an old house in an old city; i am not a member of the family; it is not my home town, but i call it home. There is nothing i can do to change those facts. They are a good people doing their best to be decent human beings, and i consider myself lucky. When researching this essay, i discovered (according to the internet) the only antonym to family is parent - that struck me odd. Family is for me fraught with meaning and the subject of much powerful feeling - happy and sad, however, it is unusual to find a word with a single opposite; the word “parent” is not what i expected to find. Maybe i was searching for some clue about my own family history - to learn whether there was something i was missing, or if my expectations were exaggerated. I can see the logic of parent as antonym to family, but don’t quite see how parent can be integral to family, though entirely apart and opposite. Perhaps it is not dissimilar to “army” having a unique definition, but still consisting of leaders and followers¿ My family was for me at one point the source of all that was worthy in the universe; it was inconceivable that there could be a better world. The more i learn of the world, the more i discover that my family is very much like every other family in the world. My parents, rather than having been flawless raising flawless children, clearly left a legacy to the world for all the faults available to humans, most of which are well represented in my flawed character. What i wonder is how many others of our kind have grown to accept the reality of imperfection, as opposed to carrying that time honored cross - “do as i say, not as i do”? It was my dumb luck to be born to parents who did their best to live their “talk”.
As a brother to my siblings - i must be as much a wonder to them as they to me (not discounting their indifference). What is sad is how little room there is in our opinions to wonder together. I have read that friends are g_d’s way of apologizing to us for our family; i damn sure am not interested in any apology from g_d. Once i realized there was no one coming to my rescue, no one to chastise my family for their obvious shortcomings and blatant cruelty, i had to accept there was to be no justice; it became clear to me the only person i was able to change was myself, my family henceforth took on a whole new complexion. The indifference from them i fought against for so long has become something in my own character to which i refuse to give ground. I can only hope mine is not some reaction formation in an unconscious effort to rise above, for striving to be “better” than them would rob me of the chance to know and accept them as clearly as i can perceive who they are. If you are thinking about me, “sanctimonious fuck” i can appreciate that, i feel way too much the same toward my family. But that does nothing to break the cycle of emotional violence that is at the root of much of our suffering on the planet. Too often i witness videos of uncommon cruelty, especially to children and it turns my stomach as much for the helplessness i feel being unable to aid or alter such injustice as for my lack of understanding as to why it occurs. It is unclear to me whether my sensitivity is an outgrowth of being unattractive and loud in a family of quiet, pretty bullies, or is my resistance instinctive to injustice generally. If my feelings are based on the former, it would suggest everyone should be raised in Hollywood by narcissistic minor stars just to gain an appreciation for decency; if i am motivated by the latter, from where does my resistance spring - what is it that motivates me to tempt the powers-that-be with such an obvious target as my interminable antics?
Appetites are cultivated at the dinner table, and in a world so full of greed, it would seem this might be a good place to search for answers. I had two brothers and a sister - there was never a day where my parents did not manage to put food on the table. I do, however remember endless discussions about the difficulty of achieving that feat, as well as formative struggles about what i would and would not finish. I can’t say which had a bigger effect on moderating my behavior, watching all the food disappear in a whoosh, or admonitions about starving children in China. Family is also not all about food, the meaning of belonging and order are learned in the bosom of the family. If your sibling use force to effect their desires, there is a good chance you will resort in kind, if a sister pleads vapors after throwing her weight around, one may learn to mistrust the sufferings of another. The obverse is equally true that values are instilled, honored and upheld within the same cauldron of conflict that determines who cleans what when. As estrangement crept into the recesses of our evolving ancestry mine own family has sought sanctuary in surrogate family warmth. However, this strategy is the same as g_d bestowing friends for an apology - de facto family cannot be parsed nor “blood is thicker than water” be diluted, the only problem being that we all do - bleed. Initially i thought of the fertile soil in processing specific family members using essay, and it would write itself, yet the more the ghosts that haunt my waking hours assert meaning the more current does one’s activity become - almost as though the two activities were mutually exclusive. Where i live revers the family in ways that preserve comfort and safety. My family are ghosts that wander close enough to me to be remembered, but not so close as to cause harm.
It would be important for you to know that where these ghosts of mine inhabit would very much resemble where i live and what i see from watching children laugh and old men with canes taking old women’s grocery bags to lighten her load. I know this because of where, how and with whom i was young. There is no amount of emotional trauma that will dissolve that sort of learning. My parents planted olive trees - “The Wonder Years” missed some of what mid-60s suburbia was like. Picture these trees, climbable and overburdened with ripe bursting purple ammunition, white t-shirts and somewhere in the background loud enough to hear “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield playing not softly. That these same trees i’m sure were planted in honor of the end of WWII would become the Castles in a Tom Sawyerish full-on post-pubescent war with colorful wounds and all just a short time before those same able-bodied however naughty lads were led to slaughter for the profit of what has become the undoing of the last gasp of liberty on a planet preparing to spontaneously combust is no small irony. My family tends to the ironic, can you tell¿ What i’m learning from being with many different families in search of the door my key fits. At first it was confusing when my door key no longer fit, but when i saw the broomstick sitting where we’d “jimmy” the sliding door open when we lost our key, i knew i had just moved. For the longest time, i believed it was they who had left me. As i find out more, i’m not so sure. Part of what i value about learning the reality of domestic collapse early on is it can be very acclimating to a more rational view of change than the picket-fence-fantasy about a chicken in every pot, fighting for democracy in a world full of dictators and tyrants, or perfect job and address fiction that anybody can be assimilated into the dream on your screen with the right portfolio.
If we are the family of peoplekind which i fictionalize in my frontal assault on the future, when anyone on the planet hears a baby laugh, they know everything is okay. Our neglect to this manifold capacity of our species to thrill in the joy of an infant cannot be desensitized. This loving inclination, however can be hijacked. When the sanctity of human warmth toward those in need becomes a key stroke, read that as “money in the bank,” we are in dire jeopardy. Your very capacity to reason and feel is being programmed; there is no amount of being “hooked-up” that can protect you - except yourself. My concern is my own memory of the influence my family held for personal choice. When a boy, as i recently watched, bends down at the wonder of a flower in an estuary looking up at his mother trying to hold his hand but too engrossed in a phone call to see his glance much less understand in his eyes she had preferred her funny box to his miraculous discovery - it makes me wonder what he might be learning from others in his family. My status as to non-member most places i go has given me a deep sympathy for what some endure to enjoy what i perceive as “as close to heaven on earth as anyone is gonna get” - the bosom of the family. They say to those much is given, much is asked; “they” seem to have forgotten the ciphers in the larder stealing the wealth of the commonweal, but that is another essay. Members of any family are the heroes of the world and on whose backs our kind will survive, and there is strength in numbers. Unfortunately for the equations of survival, logic doesn’t favor large families, but many families together - kind of like life in non-warlord populations. War within families is the worst form of war. When there are sides taken - the sanity of family generosity withers. Nor does a war between families harvest much though “Romeo and Juliet” keeps bringing ‘em through the doors, go figure¿
A sixth paragraph to the 5-paragraph from : 5.6 if you will. Just now in a quandary over the end of this family oriented essay. The old woman selling pork rinds until her death passed by. There is a tradition in the town i live to offer water to strangers - i assimilate as i can and give what i can. The fine line between giving and taking is something of the elephant in the living room nobody wants to address. She just looked at me with baleful eyes and my heart clinched; it didn’t close, just clinched. She is angry with me because i do not offer her water each time she passes. But nothing has changed; that she is angry with me is not different than if she was angry with everyone who had ever given her water but not always. Where this is a challenge is how to keep my heart open, or i am bullshitting my way to a fake-it-’til-ya’-make-it ending? i don’t know - what i imagine are throw backs to ghosts of a family gone and someone threatening with baleful eyes - if you don’t comply, you don’t get any porridge. There is no point to giving if you have not conceived the kindness yourself; this may seem at odds with non-attachment? Does non-attachment apply to consequence¿ Clearly not for those in the kleptocracy ransacking our future. It is a paradox to me that what is right for one is not right for all? This paradox of individuation may be what Jung perceived, yet justice is born at the hearth. How is it correct for me to offer to one and not to another? Limits on what one could want would resolve such a question¿ Via Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, Gurdjieef - “Bread for yourself is a material question, bread for your neighbor is a spiritual question.” I do not know the answer but pretty sure if we don’t start asking questions about such things soon, our answers will likely be more than moot. (look it up)
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parent - a sonnet
father - a poet; mother - a painter
got siblings, but we’re far from family.
ma was a goofy kid, beauty hurt her;
pa - goofier - together grew a tree.
each has been a puzzle for a lifetime.
pretty sure each have said the same - once, twice?
But would never presume to know their rhyme,
for they’d cut their teeth on dreams, paying the price.
- the same price i am paying, though childless
who exacts this standard - one size fits all¿
“we be your ancestors - obey or else”
at this turn, i do wish we’d take their call.
fuck it all, ideas spawn and music grows
which came first: chicken / egg . who the fuck knows ?
sonnet 5.6 : who the fuck cares : ¿
jts 06/11/2018
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e
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