CLXXVIII - unfilial

you know, i once read somewhere, in a piece written by a pretty old guy at the time, that when a parent of yours passes away, no matter how much strife or unhappiness there might have been between the two of you, that all doesn't matter when he or she goes. the only thing you think is, i wish i had been a better son, i wish somehow i could have been a good son. the worst thing in the world a chinese person can feel is to feel that you were unfilial.

i get that, i think. somehow when someone's gone, forever, someone important, a strange kind of awfulness comes over every little thing you hadn't done. i know what it feels like, and maybe it's misery just kind of being self-actuating, but it really is something, a sort of cognitive phenomenon maybe, it really materialises.

today i was watching a singer's contest and one of the contestants dedicated his song to his mom. and in the pre-interview he said, translating, i love you, mom, and if in my next life it would be my great wish to be your son again, and if i get another chance i will treat you well forever.

in the two seconds that i heard that the most awful feeling came over me. honestly, i've never been so affected, and so instantaneously, in my life. i literally threw down my earphones and collapsed into my bed, weeping. that was crazy.

what a process. i felt so proud of that guy for loving his mom so, so much. i mean, thinking about it makes me shudder. but at the same time i felt, as i have for so long, that i would want never to have known my parents, both of them, if i ever had the chance. and you know, i felt immediately in my heart the truth of that profession, and i swear just the most awful feeling in the world struck me. it killed me to understand how i felt about my parents. never, i would never want to be their son again. wow, that just killed me.

you know, there's so much, i think, in all my memories of them, up to the more recent exchanges with them, where i always remember feeling so intensely disappointed, even angry at them. i can't remember ever having felt proud of either of them. i honestly can't. is that crazy, well it doesn't feel crazy to me because that's just how things are as i see it. and you know as a child how crazy it is that it's always an awful feeling when it comes to family, i mean that's just so tiring, fights and awfulness are so extremely tiring. yeah maybe i forget the good times, maybe i forget when my parents were kind and loving, and that's probably horrible of me, but at the same time, i mean, it feels like the awfulness drowns out the joy, the bad times are so much more prominent in my memories than any of the good stuff. it feels that way, it feels that way when i remember it. i hated my parents a lot when i was young. and maybe growing up i've tried to be a bigger person than that, i've tried not to judge the way they were, and the things they did, i tried to think of it as just an awful situation bringing out the bad in each of us, and probably i did or i was part of the awfulness as well. and i don't judge them now, i mean they still disappoint me but i do my best, i do my best to understand that they had to go through their own process of life, and somehow, some way by some incredible goodness of God they're in their own, happier places. and all i want to do is to keep them there, and say hey, that's where they wanted to go, and i'm happy for them, far away from me. and a lot of the time i don't want to talk to either of them, and i distance myself from them, and my thought process and the reasons i devise for my ways of dealing with them is that my relationship with them has evolved that way, it is path-dependant in the sense that today i hate them or today i love them because yesterday i felt so disappointed with them or yesterday i forgot that i hated them. i mean, that's just genuinely how i feel about them, and then i have to treat them the way i genuinely feel, that's me, so really the outcome depends on the relevant history. isn't that how we treat people? is that how i treat family or the concept of it? but that's just how it is, i mean, i remember all the times i felt sorry for them, and you know, i always felt that none of the years that they had to go through in their own wilderness, i felt that they never became better people, i had that sense of superiority-complex, as in i've become a better person and why on earth haven't you, after all that? and being disappointed with what i'd seen from time to time, i could hardly bring myself to just accept and communicate with that idea of family, to be a part of that idea of togetherness.

but i feel, thinking about it, that that's horrible, even if i feel it's one of the justifiable ways of dealing with people. it's so harsh, even if i'm right, it's just, looking at things from long into the distance, so harsh. am i harsh that way? you know, it's really possible i am, that the way i treat people is so harsh that way, justifiable or no. and so can't i just, on just the basis of i've got to be better to people than this, just forget all of that and decide to love someone with all of my personal capability? i mean yes, that's possible on one view, but that's also insane on one view, isn't it? isn't that just ridiculous, like a whipped dog returning to his master's lap? i feel that way, i feel that way honestly. it's extremely cynical, but it feels like a mindset that's justifiable to me, i feel that my way of looking at the world this way treats my idea of me with due consideration. and i think that matters, but then this harshness, too.

so i think maybe, if i did get the chance in the next life, i would accept if i had the same parents, if i had another shot with them i would take it, and i wish that in that life i wouldn't look at family the way i am, the cynical man that i am now. i think they deserve a better son, a better me. i do. and it's strange i'm saying this as if it's too late now, and i don't know if that's not the case, i don't know if tomorrow i can decide to forget everything and give them all my love, or at least more than i do now. i mean isn't it enough that they love me and are proud of me? i don't know. i might be willing to do it in my next life but i might not be able to do it in this one. isn't that strange? isn't that strange, for a guy who always preaches living in the present, isn't that just so strange?

i don't know. there's no next life the way i believe things. but i don't know if i can do it in this one. you know i'm afraid when the time comes i'll be gripped by that awfulness again, the force of that feeling that i was unfilial when it counted. unfilial. wow, that's crazy. family is crazy, i don't know how other people have it at all. it kills me, man, it kills me.

CLXXVII - this is me, writing.

I might have said previously that I was writing a novel. It's difficult in the sense that I don't want to come back, tired of work, and then plug into this without feeling like I have this idea that I can put into language, this sense of me and my place in this world, through words with which I create, with which I give life.

In a way this is proof, funny as it sounds, proof that I know what I want to do. This is my proof to you, in a way, funny as that sounds. I know what I'm doing. I'm a writer. I write. I am, I do. Me. I write, don't you see.

*

“Dad, do you know what I think about when I’m running?”

He looked up at the first beckoning note in his son’s pensive lilt. Slightly toward the further recesses of his mind he grasped that his son was speaking from a faraway place. Glancing now earnestly at his son, he found in the boy’s gaze a sort of profundity, an oldness in a way that he had at first found peculiar, and then, in time, had come to quietly admire. It was weary in a way, ancient in its weariness, no, not weary, perhaps introspective, undecided, but not really those either, a sort of concentrated mindfulness in his look, straining slightly but unfocussed, as if in his mind he were deciphering abstract glyphs, shadowmarks of a race long gone.

They were in a small café, and the lingering smell of dark brew and hewed pine infused the walls themselves, dispensing in pleasant waves as if beholden to its patrons. He lowered his book to his lap, carefully replacing the bookmark where he had roughly read. He glanced now meaningfully at his boy, opening his eyes slightly wider in encouragement, “No, no, I guess not.”

“I wonder what the ocean sounds like.”

It was strange, looking back at the scene, to think of the two men staring wistfully into space. But at the time the only thing he wondered, as he sometimes did when presented with an enigmatic utterance of that sort, was whether his son meant his sentence literally, or as he probably did when wistful, predictably even, as a complete figure of speech. Savouring the opportunity to deadpan, and with an innocent, perhaps tell-tale cheerfulness ringing from his teeth, he began with honest enthusiasm the tale of his fishing expedition of yonder year, in the sharpest, bluest waters two days east of the southern peninsula, where the tuna snapped recklessly in the brilliant sunlit glints off the water.

“No, Dad. I know what the sea sounds like. I mean when you’re in the water.”

“Physically? It sounds like you’re submerged.”

“Yes, I know that. I mean like if you’re floating, just quietly floating. That’s what I imagine myself just being there, when I’m running, and when it’s quiet I picture myself lying in the water, submerged, I’m looking into the water, floating. I hear my footsteps crunching little pebbles on the ground, and that goes away, same goes the whistling wind in the trees, and then my persistent breathing, and now I close my eyes, and I listen, I listen to the sounds of the ocean, the way it sways, and swells, and then I feel a giant mass of watery bulk, a giant sweep under me, and my feet are still running but in my mind I’m in the ocean, and I understand in that moment that the ocean has completely ignored me, it has found in me nothing that is worth its tossing me away. The ocean accepts without a second thought me, my existence, as no more than a part of its distension, and in that obliviousness, that tremendousness, in its disregard and its ignorance of me I find its complete embrace, its comprehension of me, and finally its intractable acceptance of my spirit.”

“Sorta ... brain in a vat.” He nodded, sympathetic.

“No, much more human than that. Much more …”

As his son trailed off, he hmm-ed, and closed his eyes, settling back slightly as his hands wrapped lightly around his chest, book perched tidily in its crook. Floating in the ocean, listening to the sounds that must have gurgled reverberatingly through its depths. Thinking about the edges of each shore that all the interconnected water in the world slipped gently over, thinking about the clinking ice floes that bobbed and crashed at its coldest tips, thinking about the edgy plates of geological crust that must have shifted titanically every so often, the barely perceptible yet unfathomably colossal shudders that must have swelled through in waves and swirls, the incredible decaying effect of that dampening mass of water against water in motion, the infinitely silent pantomime of innumerable creatures rushing swiftly to and fro in unceasing motion below his floating, motionless body, the dark, unknowable depths of the ocean and its marvelous, impenetrable sounds.

“I mean just the silence, and then the quietness, and then as if someone had reached into a secret place and turned up the volume, the sound of an ocean suddenly just loud enough for you to hear, sounds that would have existed for all of time, sounds ancient, mystical, pangeaic, and I would just be completely lost in all that sound.”

What was the ocean, he wondered. The ocean was scary, it was big, deep, treacherous. Not made for man, nor man for it. The ocean was something he never had much occasion to think about, but he reckoned that it was a fearful thing. The ocean was something that perhaps a man might think about once in a while, when considering the great things a man might do in this world, and the ocean would, in fairness, probably have more than its fair share of unthinkably hazardous challenges a man might reckon himself worth taking up. The ocean, I mean, basically a large body of water, right? What’s in it? But he accepted that in its perplexity it mystified some, he accepted that in its inscrutability some might find a mystery kindred to the grander, more abstract queries of an existential nature. Of man’s inexorable quest to find some kind of answer, some kind of, oh, I guess that’s what this is all about.

“I think I’d like to dive in one day and just do all that.”

“I’ll take you.”

“OK.”

Outside, the afternoon sun cast its gentle warmth through the glass of the café. Staring absently at the sun’s erratic illumination through a shifting panoply of leaves, he wondered if he’d ever have to go that far into the ocean. Breathing in deeply, he shook the last blanketing thoughts from his mind, and glancing past his son, he flipped open his novel, searching for the frayed ends of some thread of the narrative.

Just as his fingers touched the familiar strands, he looked up again, and in that moment, frozen eternally in his mind, he remembered feeling a solid sense of peace, seated forever in a scene in which he belonged.

*

CLXXVI - meta-metaphors

i know that i have one foot planted on this ground, and one foot in the clouds. i know that.

i know what i'm doing. you may not believe that now, but i ask that you try, i ask that you try.

not everyone who has both their feet planted in this ground knows what they're doing. this is true, you know that.

i'm not fully invested in this ground. i know that. i'm fully invested in the world i believe in.

that's the difference.

CLXXV - it's too late, tonight, to drag the past out into the light

Where am I?

I am or really I realise that an abstract sort of cynicism has settled its way into my life, like a stone of anger that has plopped to the soft, irritable soil beneath the pond. I don't know if I recognise myself in the murky, unfamiliar ripples on the water's surface. The truth is that I am still subsiding. My waters are not yet clear. Minute reverberations form infinitely tessellated and cross-interfering patternic poly-panoplies as they rebound off the edges of my self awareness. Hidden in the depths, little creatures seek uncertain shelter in the doubtful crevices of my soul, wishing for light, missing always the light, once clear and strong.

I have survived the past's week-nights laced with drink and grand, grand Horowitz. In the dark, drinking heavily, absorbing without superfluous contemplation the exquisite playing of this wonderful, wonderful old man, I have somehow accepted deep within my soul that life is not horrendous, unthinkable, cruel. This man, his music, is too much, too good, universally, absolutely and undeniably perfect, overwhelming. I have been brought low and yet I turn to this heavenly playing, and it lays me down to rest. I thank God that I don't play the piano, because at this moment, with the limited understanding I have, his music is absolutely perfect.

I want you to live happily for ever. I know that I couldn't belong in that picture. I wish for you to be happy for ever, and may God's love be with you, always.

I realised today, listening to U2 on the supermarket radio, that I was me again. Part of me knows that I still miss you. Eating dinner today I realised that I was Levin and you were that girl in Anna Karenina who wanted to fall in love with a Vronsky. I know that now. And the only way I could benignly rationalise everything was to posit that you didn't believe in me enough to trust that I would be alright. I also know, sparing myself at last, that there was nothing I could have done about that. I think that I will be glad to someday, when we have departed this reality, realising everything possible about each other, to gently tell you that you don't need my forgiveness. Honestly, I love you. Goodbye.

I don't know where I am. That is the only philosophically honest answer I know, if at all. I wonder if it's strange that I'm here, lost to myself, when it seems like people, everyone else, somehow live their own lives, blissfully heedless of the things I mull, grapple with, perhaps needlessly. Yes, I wonder if my life is strange, foolish. I get that too. Admittedly, I even expect that when someone appears I will be rescued from this strangeness. And perhaps that is unlikely, wistful. I really, perhaps, am the only person who honestly, truthfully, genuinely doesn't know where he is, and isn't afraid of that warp, that paradox. And it's times like these I feel that that soft, magnificent music tells me not to be afraid, and not to fear pain.

Ok, grandfather. I will not fear pain. Lord, give me this day my daily bread.

CLXXIV - no mas

i can't imagine a more honest stretch of two weeks for which i'd been through so, so many emotions.

i wish i could have them all back.

my greatest, perhaps only, regret is that i could never explain to you the things that filled my heart, in a way that would make sense to you. that itself, for my words to have floundered, is witheringly, scathingly harrowing.

i finally understand listening to debussy. i get it now. fragility, preciousness, nostalgic echoes and evocations, courage, truth, nobility, sadness and beauty, solitude, the quietness of tranquility, gentle, wonderful, profound progressions. and music is the best.

i realise how much i want to prove to you that you were wrong. that i was right and that i would always be right, about you, about me, and maybe about us. i doubt any force on earth could convince me otherwise. but you would not see it as i saw, as i felt, believed, trusted, hoped, dared, prayed and loved.

i feel that my anger towards God has helped. i think it was part of the process, and really, that alone, i don't think i can judge that. it was necessary, and it was a process, and i think having come back to being ok through all that, i don't think i can judge that. the truth was that being angry towards God, deathly angry, has helped.

but i'm not angry anymore. some strange kind of acceptance has flushed over my soul. peace perhaps from accepting that God could only leave it to another's choice whether or not she might love me, or perhaps, that someone infinitely, impossibly more suited might love her too.

and so i prayed to God, not for my own sake, never, but for no mas.

no mas, ok, Lord? no mas.

CLXXIII - babel'ed

the key to fighting the box is to build your own box.

but even then you can get babel'ed. never forget that.

have a drink, lad. have a wee one. ;)