Theatre d'Absurditie

     So the bomb scares during this past spring semester  at the University of Pittsburgh, one of my alma maters, were primarily generated by a Scottish separatist living in Ireland. He is not a young man, and he is in a wheelchair, and he has a history of bomb scares, primarily in England. That reads like the script of a dark comedy, very dark, for an indie movie that is secretly trying to depict absurdity. It seems like postmodernism come home to roost. Nothing about a man old young to be on Social Security in the United States, as well as on disability, terrorizing a university in another country in order to achieve liberation for his own country from yet another country makes any sense whatsoever. Sometimes human nature and emotions and thought processes are, indeed, stranger than fiction.

Falling Hard and Fast

     This was a day when I noticed how easily I yield to fears, and how quickly the reasonable exercise of asking myself what I am afraid of can become inflammation of fear beyond all reason. Impatience is one of my chief shortcomings, and I have been waiting and working for months toward a particular goal. I received notice late last week that goal should be realized sometime early this week. I have spent hours on this task, often dealing with frustrating individuals and institutions. Now, however, there is no work left for me. I have completed my part, completed it weeks ago in fact, and must wait for others to follow through. I do not like admitting it has been a fearful six weeks for me, when I have repeatedly convinced myself the goal would never be achieved and I would be let down by those whose cooperation I require. For the last two days, in an effort to uncover the nature of my fears, I let myself think events through to the worst possible scenario, and then found myself stuck there, unable to talk myself out of such an outrageous outcome. I am embarrassed by how crazy I became in a short period of time! No wonder I usually try to spend some percentage of each day with other people, rather than alone with my thinking!

Endless

Forgiveness is complicated. One day, the birds and clouds and sun all sing, while leaves dance to their tune, and I have finished forgiving you. I breathe and move free of the ravages of resentment, ready for shiny, unfettered life. Not only have I forgiven your specific actions, old and recent, I accept your limitations, my unending expectations.

The next day, or a week later, we talk on the phone, or I visit your house. We discuss your plan to remodel, or redecorate, or share a meal, or take a walk, perhaps we only have a conversation. Suddenly, in response to something you say, or don't say, one of those limitations that interferes with my expectations rears once more. In a moment I’m ensnared, like thickened and sour milk, resentment courses through me. Not only will you not change, a reality I thought I had accepted, you're running you  nails down the blackboard in my heart yet again. 

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Write Once, Edit Twice

      One of the disadvantages of having taught, edited and proofread English for years is I no longer notice errors by choice. People do not find it pleasant to go to the movies or watch TV with someone who involuntarily erupts in scorn when a plot anomaly or gross (or minor) discrepancy occurs. I heard rave reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, only to discover that the final chapters jumped the shark completely, like the last season of a once-good TV series. The main characters' actions made no sense and were impossible for those characters. The patriarch died and in a later chapter called a final meeting, whereupon he died a second time. Then I tried to determine why the book was so popular, and concluded that, given its daunting length, only ten people actually read it. The others just bought it, or only started it, or read it until the bad guy was captured and then quit. I decided copy editors--too many--tried to clean the draft, which the original author was unable to revise due to his unfortunate death days after dropping off the first draft. He needed to come back to fix his book and then die a second time.

     Sadly, that is just one example. One evening of television is usually enough to find a quiverfull of plot anomalies, especially on those crime thrillers that seem to believe the audience is more interested in which cop is dating another (or wants to), and whose heroin addiction is about to be exposed to the police force. With all the soapsuds, the writers forget which criminal has an ironclad alibi, or lacks any motive or means whatsoever. 

     What's upsetting to a word person who can't help being attentive to detail is the lack of care and effort taken. Whether in a book or a TV show (or anywhere--including newspapers), it's insulting to those who take the time to buy, read or watch. When it's performance, it's insulting to the actors, actresses, director, cameramen, boom person, and everyone involved. Ultimately, shoddy craft demeans media and literature. 

A Survivor Responds to the Sandusky Conviction

I wept when I read the headline: “Jerry Sandusky convicted on 45 counts” related to sexually abusing children. I wept in gratitude, sadness, and too many other emotions to count. You see it happened to me too, though I never met Sandusky. Twenty years after my first memory, my family is not interested in knowing about it. In addition, my fellow writing students and professors sixteen years ago generally discouraged me from writing what they called “confessional” material (as if I had some sin to confess with regard to this). One professor quoted a poet in class who had written “We’ve had enough incest poems.” I even had one acquaintance explain that her adolescent sexual relationship with her father wasn’t incest because she enjoyed it. Granted, that was a unique response, but most of the people I know have reacted at best with embarrassment, most often with disinterest, and, at worst with disbelief or outright rejection.

There is an unreality to remembering long-forgotten memories, and while God has placed individuals in my life who helped me honor those memories, the reactions described above have contributed to an ongoing disconnect, or rather, several huge disconnects. First, I feel unknown by the members of my family of origin, and vice versa. They seem like exotic species that I visit occasionally and with whom I have few points of connection. Similarly, at my church, my other primary community, I feel that with all but a handful of people, I have shown them only a thin reed of myself every week. Even my close friends there have experienced at best a little of me. The biggest aching gap is between my head, where I generally live, and my body, which is a distant country of which I have little awareness.    

Beings an abuse survivor is not the only truth of my existence, but the wounds created when I was sexually abused as child have not completely healed, after twenty years of living with the memories, getting counseling, and seeking recovery. What I experienced does not explain all my struggles. Still, when I realized someone had been convicted, that a court system and a jury listened to and believed his victims, I felt gratitude. The foggy unreality of walking through memories clears. It is a victory, and, lives remain scarred, trust remains broken, and there is nothing to celebrate.

Approaching Vulnerability by Degrees

Today was hot, and I was overly tired from both the heat and some medicine. I tried to write but couldn't think hard. How did the ancient people who lived in hot climates manage to think? Maybe they had air conditioning systems without electricity based on technologies we have lost, lived their lives at night. Maybe they only wrote in their cooler seasons. 

Someone described me today. He said he used to start fifty projects at once and pour himself completely into them, only to lose steam, drift, fail to finish. Why does it help me feel better about myself when someone reports suffering from the same insanity I do? It doesn't make me more sane, but it feels so good, like seeing someone else with a lousy haircut, only bigger, like a hidden wound has been dressed, like hope. Knowing it makes someone else feel that good could encourage me to share my peculiar failings, if I can remember how the good felt at the right moment, when I am actually speaking. 

Thoughts and Intentions of the Heart

            A voice in my head that’s been there for as long as I can remember makes two types of statements in tandem in group and similar situations: “Look at/listen to me/pick me” and “They never look at/listen to/pick me.” Usually I talk back to this voice, or try to drown it out by talking to the people around me. Sometimes I remind it repeatedly that I don’t want the task, job or responsibility being discussed. While it may be quiet for a short time, this voice has not ceased its prattle.

            Today I read in Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, The Message, “My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God” (Galatians 2:19-20). While this may describe Paul, and a few people I have met in my life, my guess is most people do want to appear righteous—or appear something—in front of others, as least more than occasionally.

            How does on, how do I, get from the voice in my head needing recognition to having my ego no longer be central? How do I make the need to be noticed disappear? Is it merely a question of drowning out that voice (when I can) and trying hard or longer to do so until I succeed? Can a trip to a healing service or conference and enough inner healing silence the needy voice forever? Is this the sort of problem that counseling solves? Perhaps a spiritual discipline, or several, or the twelve steps can accomplish it. Probably several of the listed tasks are required.