I am full, yet when i sit down to write, words come only in dribbles. So much going on inside me...Many around me are struggling- much to my regret i feel distant from my friends at the house- i am consumed with so many things- i fear i am slipping away from them...the thing i am trying not to think about may be one thing...that may be what causes the haze that descends on my attempts to write about anything else- that may be part of what is pulling me away at the moment. i feel almost as if forming, as if i am striving to break free of a sticky cocoon, and can't quite yet... something... its almost there...my mind is spinning...
That might just be lack of food.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Friday, August 26, 2005
Writing about Writing off...
Having ranted a post or so ago about my alienation from my family, i might have to say a few thingsd in defense of some of them. I'm normally one for being friendly to people you actually like, rather than pretending to like people you think it good, or advantagous, to be friends with. ONe thing about family, it forces you to have dealings wsith those you might not ordinarily have any interest in, those who, if they were not related to you, you would dismiss into the broad categories we use to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with people as individuals- like "trailer trash" for example. But i'm talking about my mother's side of the family here. Specifically my aunt and uncle, who are currently staying with my mother. My aunt is big, loud, and talks a million miles a minute in a stuttering rural accent ( despite living in calgary for probably 30 years!) She drives an old pick-up with a camper on it, her bearded husband drives a really old ( but not classic) harley( nobody said they were poor...)But they dress in zellers finest, and generally give the impression of being people that myself and a good many people i know would regard with , at best, morbid amusement , but really, would religate to a vaguely sub-human category of human charicatures, far-side cartoons, to refer to only as examples of the decay, the frayed edges, of north american civilization-to make fun of. In other words, they are not, in any common sense of the term, pretty.
But they do feel, and dream, and hope, and, wonder of wonders, think. I must be the first to admit i find my aunt's non-stop stammering really, REALLY, annoying, and can't be around her very long at all. But none of it, i am discovering, is meaningless, certainly not more meaningless than much of what i blather about . And it is not insincere.
They were talking to me about trying to find her husband's ( an adoptee) birth family, about travelling Alberta to find a quiet place to retire and live a simpler life- real things, and things i could identify with- and they know me so little, but they willingly share this with me. My aunt, in explaining why they ruled out retiring in her hometown, frankly and honestly discussed the "trailer trash" stigma- a subject my "PC" ness wouldn't have touched, or would have cloaked in vaguer language. She talked about what it was like to have grown up poor and scorned in a small town- how the stigma continued into adulthood- how everyone knew many of her brothers and sisters,and their children, were often drunk, divorced, broke, in trouble and always ripe for head-shaking, tut-tutt-ing gossip.She wasn't whining, she didn't attack the "small town mentality" or call people snobs, just honestly related the effect of a family's reputation- and i saw the genuine pain she felt- i recognized the pain of being misunderstood, of being judged and written off by people who never bothered to actually get to know her- being dismissed by assumption and association- and i felt a twinge of guilt for my own thinly veiled elitism, but i also identified. Aparently, there are those who have me categorized as a "loser", and while i frankly can't really blame them for their interpretation of my life based on visible circumstances, i'm afraid my attitude to them is not as charitable as my aunt's is to the small town prigs who have obviously haunted her life.
My own pride gets up at being dismissed ( or at being categorized at all- even when placed in arguably positive divisions) that people who do not personally know me ( and perhaps some who do) would DARE make evaluations of my worth. But i know i do it myself all the time.
IN my own case i know that respect is earned, i can't demand it,that i'm not living my life to impress the critics, and that they haven't had to BE me, so who gives a rip what they think? I'm trying, i'm certainly not proud of some things, but there are others i AM proud of that don't fall under some people's definitions of "accomplishments"
Back to my aunt- little about her life is "pretty" but she survived a bad marriage and finally, past middle age, found a good man. She worked a lowly job steadily and honestly for many years, and i've never heard her complain about it. She stubbornly resisted people's expectations of her failure, resisted the influence of her screwed-up family, and remains, in a realization i am struck with, a profoundly good-hearted person, who wants little more than peace and quiet, a simple life, and a little understanding.
But from the outside, in the things that are obvious- a big, loud redneck who talks continously in scrambled sentences that give the impression of some sort of mental disorder.
But they do feel, and dream, and hope, and, wonder of wonders, think. I must be the first to admit i find my aunt's non-stop stammering really, REALLY, annoying, and can't be around her very long at all. But none of it, i am discovering, is meaningless, certainly not more meaningless than much of what i blather about . And it is not insincere.
They were talking to me about trying to find her husband's ( an adoptee) birth family, about travelling Alberta to find a quiet place to retire and live a simpler life- real things, and things i could identify with- and they know me so little, but they willingly share this with me. My aunt, in explaining why they ruled out retiring in her hometown, frankly and honestly discussed the "trailer trash" stigma- a subject my "PC" ness wouldn't have touched, or would have cloaked in vaguer language. She talked about what it was like to have grown up poor and scorned in a small town- how the stigma continued into adulthood- how everyone knew many of her brothers and sisters,and their children, were often drunk, divorced, broke, in trouble and always ripe for head-shaking, tut-tutt-ing gossip.She wasn't whining, she didn't attack the "small town mentality" or call people snobs, just honestly related the effect of a family's reputation- and i saw the genuine pain she felt- i recognized the pain of being misunderstood, of being judged and written off by people who never bothered to actually get to know her- being dismissed by assumption and association- and i felt a twinge of guilt for my own thinly veiled elitism, but i also identified. Aparently, there are those who have me categorized as a "loser", and while i frankly can't really blame them for their interpretation of my life based on visible circumstances, i'm afraid my attitude to them is not as charitable as my aunt's is to the small town prigs who have obviously haunted her life.
My own pride gets up at being dismissed ( or at being categorized at all- even when placed in arguably positive divisions) that people who do not personally know me ( and perhaps some who do) would DARE make evaluations of my worth. But i know i do it myself all the time.
IN my own case i know that respect is earned, i can't demand it,that i'm not living my life to impress the critics, and that they haven't had to BE me, so who gives a rip what they think? I'm trying, i'm certainly not proud of some things, but there are others i AM proud of that don't fall under some people's definitions of "accomplishments"
Back to my aunt- little about her life is "pretty" but she survived a bad marriage and finally, past middle age, found a good man. She worked a lowly job steadily and honestly for many years, and i've never heard her complain about it. She stubbornly resisted people's expectations of her failure, resisted the influence of her screwed-up family, and remains, in a realization i am struck with, a profoundly good-hearted person, who wants little more than peace and quiet, a simple life, and a little understanding.
But from the outside, in the things that are obvious- a big, loud redneck who talks continously in scrambled sentences that give the impression of some sort of mental disorder.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
no news....is good news?
I have been collectively berated ( as in, berated along with many others) for posting infrequently ... for which i apologize. It is not entirely true that i have nothing to say...or even that i'm unfathomably busy- after all, my only gainful employment right now is at an internet cafe...but when you type as slow as i do, a sizeable post can be an entire evening's work- but i'm just making excuses. Truth be told, i don't like to talk about myself- even to myself. I quit journalling ( for the most part) because i was reading past journals and found myself whining about the same things over and over again, and even repeating the same "insightful" observations on life- i found it discouraging, a reminder of lack of progress, of growth, in certain areas, and in reading old journals i experienced distaste similar to what many feel when they hear their voice on tape...Am i really that annoying? Am i that self important? Some old journals DO, i admit, reveal a more honest, living faith than i currently practice- which is troubling- but book after book of them are also full of blind wishful thinking and me parroting "Christian" self-help drivel. Yeccch.
Before someone saw fit to create a blog for me, i had thought that, if i had a blog, i would use it to stick up portions of my stories, or other writings, for some instant criticism and response. But the story i am currently labouring on is both too personal and too recent ( and not far enough removed from recognizible reality) for a broad, public airing, which is a pity, because i would love feedback on it. So this is a blog about how i don't know what to blog ...
Before someone saw fit to create a blog for me, i had thought that, if i had a blog, i would use it to stick up portions of my stories, or other writings, for some instant criticism and response. But the story i am currently labouring on is both too personal and too recent ( and not far enough removed from recognizible reality) for a broad, public airing, which is a pity, because i would love feedback on it. So this is a blog about how i don't know what to blog ...
Friday, August 12, 2005
Family is a very odd thing. I went to a celebration of my Aunt's 70th birthday this week, which consisted of a small, awkward gathering of relatives near and not-so-near in a white, echoing community hall in the west end. Either because of the mood i was in, or the simple fact that most of these people really had little to do with my life in any way, but i was even quieter and more detached than i usually am . I stood by the food, said little, and observed. It all struck me as slightly absurd. The only thing most of us had in common was a little genetic material, yet we feel obligated to gather every so often and catch up on the superficial details of each others' lives, where we are now working or studying, where we travelled, who we ran into once and where, as if any of this mattered to us, as if we were old friends who actually had some shared experience, some bond more concrete than this mere biological "family", as if these people had interesected with my life for more than a few minutes, at another birthday, wedding, or funeral 15 years ago, when i was only "this high". True, immediate family has shared experience, shared pain, perhaps some shared happy memories, some journey together, and so much of this fills the silences between and behind our words, our differing remembrances of those times when we were together, when what we did and said affected each other, before the seas rose and we became islands. I would be a fool to discount the affect that 20 years of living with one or both of my parents, and my brother, had on who i am now...but could not people i have known for much shorter periods of time have equally significant influence on me? And what are these lonely, troubled souls who shared my early life to me now? When i was young, they were my world, my culture, my friends and enemies, the people whose love or approval i sought, the only ones whose habits and words i sought to understand, the only ones from whom to try to cajole the things i needed or wanted. As i grew older, they still shared my world with new objects, new puzzles and confusions. But i left them somewhere back there, or they individually left me and each other, and now i am as incomprehensible to them as they are to me. I have spent more time with them than with any other human beings. Yet we are strangers, groping for some point of common understanding. My father i think i know best, yet he continues to surprise me, and in his silence there is a deep well of feeling and thought i have not touched. He is still a mystery - i cannot predict him, and i do not how to read the motives behind his actions. I worry that all relationships lead here, to this entropy, that more time only reveals less understanding, that any connection or shared understanding is only an illusion that time will eventually dispell, leaving all of as completely alone and un-comprehended.
Yet i share tables with other peoples familes, the children of my father's sister or brother, who i have only snippets of shared life, a thanksgiving meal once a year at best, people i respect and enjoy, but as an observer- they do not know me and i can only know in them what read in those short encounters. They finish degrees, move, marry and produce children- but these do not reveal who they are. This is a gathering of stangers- we are all nervous, we are all unsure of the other, circling carefully, answering politely but vaguely, avoiding the known but unmentionable, My father and my uncle's alcoholism, my cousin's failed marriages, another cousin's disowning her mother, the fact that my own mother, previously a part of these strange gatherings, is never mentioned here, as though, in my father leaving her, she has ceased to exist. I wonder what they say about each other when they leave here, how do husbands and wifes judge the updates they obtain about these unrelated relations? I wonder what they think of me? Do i imagine their puzzled expressions, their forced inqiries? Afterwards i imagine them shaking their heads, wondering what happened to "Don and his boys"
I think about them, i read into their distance and their too-polite inquiries a condesension, an unpleasant but necessary duty discharged- but is that only attributing my own feelings to them? Is it merely the same noncomprehension that seperates us all? Why should we expect to find understanding and connection in family, though we are thrown into it by chance, as it were, when it is difficult to find even among our carefully selected friends, drawn from those that common interest and pursuit has led us alongside?
Yet i share tables with other peoples familes, the children of my father's sister or brother, who i have only snippets of shared life, a thanksgiving meal once a year at best, people i respect and enjoy, but as an observer- they do not know me and i can only know in them what read in those short encounters. They finish degrees, move, marry and produce children- but these do not reveal who they are. This is a gathering of stangers- we are all nervous, we are all unsure of the other, circling carefully, answering politely but vaguely, avoiding the known but unmentionable, My father and my uncle's alcoholism, my cousin's failed marriages, another cousin's disowning her mother, the fact that my own mother, previously a part of these strange gatherings, is never mentioned here, as though, in my father leaving her, she has ceased to exist. I wonder what they say about each other when they leave here, how do husbands and wifes judge the updates they obtain about these unrelated relations? I wonder what they think of me? Do i imagine their puzzled expressions, their forced inqiries? Afterwards i imagine them shaking their heads, wondering what happened to "Don and his boys"
I think about them, i read into their distance and their too-polite inquiries a condesension, an unpleasant but necessary duty discharged- but is that only attributing my own feelings to them? Is it merely the same noncomprehension that seperates us all? Why should we expect to find understanding and connection in family, though we are thrown into it by chance, as it were, when it is difficult to find even among our carefully selected friends, drawn from those that common interest and pursuit has led us alongside?
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