One of the great fortunes and misfortunes of any life is that we are stuck with ourselves, for better or for worse, as the old wedding vow goes and despite our attempts to change, we are met in the face of our own perpetual resistance. Unlike with marriage, you cannot divorce yourself, throw yourself's bags on the street, or even take some time apart to "think about how you got here." Today my fortune out of the Chinese Fortune Sticks container reads, You will soon make friends from enemies. This bit of writing on a miniature tongue depressor does not cheer my heart -- I have a few enemies and would like to keep them that way as a constant source of irritation, like sores I can't stop worrying. But if the prediction is true, and they are to become my friends, they will understand me as well as anyone does, particularly the plethora of qualities I try to keep hidden about myself. And I would understand their flaws. One would hope that this quality of knowing would make us more generous with one another, but this seems as likely as winning the big stuffed animal at a carnival game. I know some people do as I see them lugging around gigantic prizes along with their cotton candy. But this person is never me. I am the person with the cotton candy in her hair, on her clothes, the syrup from the grape snow-cone staining my clothes.
One of my favorite pictures is of the Heidelburg Project, a famous outsider art installation located on a cluster of houses in Detroit. The picture features a doll's head sticking up behind a tree trunk. The doll looks so real that people often ask who she is and some people think it's me hiding behind the tree with just my hair and eyes showing. I remember the day I took the photo -- the sun shone down with a vigor not common to the time of year, the grass seemed so green, that color so often associated with envy. The doll's head has been worn down by weather; it has grown hideous from exposure. Such is its lot! No child will drag it back inside the house and love it and so I do.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"There were people who could start new lives and people who couldn't." Judith Rossner
Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Debaser The Pixies
Benedictions and Maledictions
Okay, so the ride is over! The Sopranos ended and for the record, I loved the ending, the fade to black. I know some people wanted a bloodbath, but isn't it far worse to have to live? And Journey never sounded so good!
8 comments:
How could anyone be your enemy? What's not to love?
Isn't the point of all life of humanity to lose the sense of self and just be? I have neither pockets enough nor strength enough left to carry what used to be the 'perpetual resistance' around anymore.
I have thrown my bags to the street and watch as trains and cars and bycycles run over them crushing and destroying them and their contents.
Yet like everyone else I continue to acquire more luggage but eventually I feel the weight of it, in anger or animosity and then just dump it. I have enemies a'plenty but I am their enemy; they are not mine. No use for the trip they want to take me on, I may hop the frieght for awhile but eventually I will, just jump keep my knee's flexible as I hit the ground and move on.
If they desire to stay on the train, hell with it, let it take them where it will.
As for me I have had enough scabs that are now just scars that mean nothing more than I got burned by some slag.
Everything deserves someone to care for them even weather beaten doll heads.
I've learned to tolerate myself. We've drawn a line through the house and he stays on one side and I on the other.
I like the ending very much about the doll's head.
The weathered heads of dolls everywhere thank you for exposing the pain of being left out in the elements of a cold, hardened city. I love that whole part about the Heidelberg project, as well as the opening line, "...met in the face of our own perpetual resistance". How true that is to this soul. You're being universal again, you know!
The keeping your enemies as constant irritations part is what I identify with the most. As a statement it speaks of the power and will that it takes to try and keep a balance in life as much as you possibly can. Good perspective. Thoughtful. Inspiring
Nice post
So you and Sternberg have made amends?
Hey Jim,
Um no. Certainly not. I haven't become THAT spiritually evolved!
That picture reminds me of Fiona Apple, with her dirty little song about sex outside of a committed relationship.
I have one enemy, other than myself, but the hate is not mutual. She has a strong hatred for me to the point of absurdity, whereas I think that she is just a sad person.
Well Michelle, I couldn't help myself on that one. Shortly after my poetry/heartbeat reading, he quit visiting my blog. Now he'd have one hell of a time finding it--not that he's looking. Still reading your insightful posts.
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