It isn’t often i rewrite an entire 5 paragraph essay - this will be my 2nd attempt to explore some meanings of advantage. Be advised it may contain references to family - so if you’re the squeamish sort, look away now. Growing up i loved my family more than is healthy, which perplexes me to this day. How can a feeling so buoyant and full of promise as waking up on a spring day to a full day of baseball, become as scabrous and burdensome as a wake for a loved one that never ends? The good news is, i am entirely responsible; the bad news is, i am entirely responsible. Nor am i sure how to explain which is which. As with most good stories of the human kind, it involves tension between the flesh and the spirit. In this case an antique, owned by the most loving personality i can recall from my early years - great grandma Munner who could make the arrival of mail sound like the birth of Christ - “How Grand! How Wonderful! How Splendid”, also the same woman who stiffed my old man for his share of the family home at 1024 W 20th St, Los Anngeles - built by my great grandfather; the 2nd home in L.A. built by an ancestor. When pop died, somehow the letter explaining this decision to my grandmother came to me. The man who received the entire proceeds of the family home, cousin Charles, was a decent enough guy, but hardly worth the entire share. This event made pop tough as nails concerning some 'things' and dumb as a post regards sentiment. Having nothing but conjecture, to explain this decision, I imagine the idea was to give Charles, the elder more powerful cousin, a leg up; from which he was to then reach down lend a hand. This same fiction played out on the maternal side with my great Aunt Eula, putting grandmother Maude through school, yet when it came time, Maude absented herself to teach in the badlands of Nevada where she met; married and bore 3 children in quick succession to my grandpa Joe. Sister Eula, without a degree then pursued a civil service career where she climbed through ranks eventually providing home, security and companionship to the college educated, but given-to-vapors, sister Maude - now with 3 children and a never gonna strike-it-rich, miner husband Joe, 20 years her senior. In my travels, i’ve crossed paths with many people from other cultures encouraged to some fantasy about the easy lives of ‘mericans - easy betrayals perhaps, fictional alliances maybe - the only ones living the good life in ‘merica are the ones born on third base thinking they hit a triple.
My oldest brother emulated Charles and pursued a life as labor leader. How much of this vocation was unconsciously telegraphed to him through pop’s processing of a savage family betrayal, i’m sure i’ll never know, same as i will likely never find out much about my eldest brother; we are not close. I was cross-eyed and loud as a child, the loud part coming from a ruptured eardrum making voice modulation difficult for one already given to enthusiasm. I’m fairly certain my quiet brother felt the unfortunate medical focus i received as the Identified Patient (IP) in our highly dysfunctional family constellation was somehow an advantage that was rightly his as the oldest sibling - but i fear we’ll never know the answer to that question - battle lines having been drawn and tender hearts hardened. For years i believed i could prevail over the circumstances of my birth and encourage love from my recalcitrant older siblings. Any advantages that beauty and rank in the family order conferred, were not of the sharing kind. So the path to individuation seemed the only advantage left to me, the misbegotten fool. It didn’t cause too much permanent damage that as the IP i was introduced to the vocabulary for the mentally ill - neurotic, depression, inferiority complex - words no young person should ever learn when expressions like fuck you, eat shit and die, your mother wears army boots are available. The real advantage of my upbringing was the conceit of education, for my father truly believed that everything could be understood when properly studied, including my mother; this patronizing patience of pa’s drove ma wiggy, for she was having a difficult enough time attempting to reconcile the multigenerational malignant narcissistic disorder and the reality of the dirt-floor-kitchen summers spent with her father in the wilds of Nevada and the southern belle airs of her maiden aunt and conveniently delicate, but college educated mother in prewar Los Angeles. It is no small wonder my family is conflicted about love, much less positions of power and objects of worth. Ma eventually shook pa off like a bad cold and honed her skills as a beauty of consequence, foot loose in the opulent broken-home terrain of post WWII, pre 'OC' Orange County California.
To her, i am sure she felt these changes were to her advantage, and i would not fault her apparent success in the world. My responsibility to myself is to disentangle the real person she is from the cartoon cutout Beverly Hills maven she was to become as the 2nd wife to a Jewish insurance CEO - an entirely decent man himself, though his office referred to him as the 'Ayatollah' - a sadly ironic jibe at the pre 9-11 Iranian fanatic before the current genocidal mayhem of the zionists in Palestine. Had the world ended then, i think my entire family would have died happy - sadly, even pop. The pernicious influence of wealth, and its trappings eventually seeped into the empty recesses of my hungry family. Our fates had been sealed long before the delusion of wealth and power lowered its veil over our hearts and colored our visions of success. My stepfather was a standup guy, but the introduction of 'plenty' into my family’s impoverished roots created a growth we will never dig out from under. It has created craven appetites and desires that may well have subsided without the Faustian banquet a Beverly Hills address provided. To have the possibility which riches can represent waved in front of you, is not unlike Dicken’s Great Expectations - a lot of smoke and mirrors. When a larger-than-life proxy parent looks at your latest creative effort and drunkenly quips, “fuck ‘em, we’ll hire the whole god damn gallery,” it is easy to not see the 3 whiskeys talking, nor understand the routine office braggadocio of the corporate world; i later learned the fine line between truth and fiction in the upper echelons. I met my last wife one Thanksgiving within this cauldron of confusion; she taught me a lot about taking advantage. At that time depending on one’s perspective, she was the housepainter/waif/occupying force. For my step father, i became the interloper, for ma, living proof her twice married son was not a total washout, and a convenient foil for her husband's errant interest. 20 years later, 5 years after my divorce to her former rival, ma was compelled to point this woman only married me because i had a rich mother.
The peculiar thing about that story is i’m fairly certain ma thought that by telling me, she was giving me some kind of advantage. The real curiosity is why she waited so long to share¿ This may become a real problem for the entire family - waiting for some perfect moment to open their hearts again and to begin anew. I fear greed has taken too deep a root and is now finding fertile soil in the minds of the children’s children. Is this how the fiction of a growing economy is propagated - to find a sufficiently conflicted upwardly mobile family constellation; expose them, like Pip, to the trappings of ease and comfort, just enough to compromise normally humane and generous feelings for each other, and then let greed grow like the weed it is from heart to heart until it has destroyed everything in its path, except that one successful person who then goes off and infects some other family constellation susceptible to starvation-based ambition¿ For a time, i worked in a major corporate commercial real estate firm - 7 years. It is no small coincidence this job coincided with the collapse of my last marriage. That a person of my political persuasions would have ever been caught dead in such a working environment is the important question. I am not immune to greed, but it took a long time for me to parse that aspect of my character; i still have not found a vaccine. Taking advantage seems ingrained within the human DNA; it may be what allowed us to take the high ground when cooperatively fighting Mastodons. However, in those days family wisdom was passed down generation to generation, whereas more often today families are estranged from each other or the language that is not taboo is so normalized or culturally coopted, where for example buen provecho, 'good advantage is conflated with bon appetit, good health', that we’ve lost the capacity to take real advantage of that keen intellect which distinguished us from the larger, faster and meaner creatures of our past. I do know from my experience in the office and civil service cultures, you will find the same mix of decency vs pathological avarice that you might find in most every other demographic.
This writing exercise began in an attempt to clarify a heartfelt, however ungenerous position to estranged, disinterested family members. It is not necessary to recount the morbid details; suffice it to say the anguish i shared was from a much younger version of myself who wanted to believe he could influence older siblings into generosity and love by contrasting perspectives. It didn’t work when young, and i’m fairly certain it won’t now. What does work is the process of open, honest, and gentle expression of one’s interior. It may be that what i seek, more than any material claim is simple human communication. To not be barricaded from what had once been a safe haven, however dangerous environ, can be a very damaging experience. Like Bob Dylan said, “You can always come back, you just can’t come back all the way.” Some places and some people are only meant to be with us for a time, and no amount of money, or planning or manipulation will alter that fact. We live in a temporary realm which from the changing perspectives of our relative ages and understanding only appears to be stable and inalterable. The real change that takes place is our capacity to reckon with a highly mutable reality - to adapt and to learn whatever will aid in relieving oneself of a socialized fiction that ownership is anything other than a tired refrain destroying relationships, nations, and the planet. The person who appears to be invulnerable is dying inside for having to maintain an impossible fiction. To the amoral sociopaths amongst, us death may be little more than a curiosity, for the balance of humanity the real advantage of being alive is to give to others as much of oneself as is possible - with my father those gifts were tools and a hunger to dig deeply into the mystery of existence; then to share that knowledge with everyone; for ma, it was a realtime demonstration of the mutability of the human personality. She has been as honest about her desires, hungers and pathology as any human being i have ever known, whether or not that influence becomes an advantage for me, time will only tell.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
disadvantage - the sonnet
Controlling must be a disadvantage;
unlike herding a swarm of butterflies
where “lead, i’ll follow” - is an adage
more than useful, it actually applies.
Wanting what doesn’t exist, makes no sense.
So why spend a lifetime hiding from death?
Can’t buy a pass with a gazillion cents;
yet, they steal yours like it were their last breath.
Carrying other’s weight, can’t be useful,
though we wear our parent’s dreams like a suit;
sometimes armor built with plate by spoonful,
sometimes, dreams of joy dressed up as more loot.
The odd thing being, they - the most disadvantaged
get little from life, save what they’ve vantaged
jts 04/02/2018
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com
all rights reserved
∞
No comments:
Post a Comment