Wednesday, March 05, 2003

First of all, I'm sorry for all the dead elephants. I am. The ones murdered, tusks taken before their time. I really, really am. But damn. Ivory keys. They really do feel different. Especially for a sweaty guy like me. No plastic slick with perspiration, fingers sliding off the keys. Just a deck of black and white that somehow feels the fingers, knows when to grip, when to slide, as if an elegy for so many deaths premature. At least, and I take comfort in this, perhaps solace later, as I become more proficient, these are not some chintzy objet d'art.  But a means to that end. Or pleasure more profound than some miniarature polo game, carved upon  the life of the magnificent Oliphant. So Bill points out today that there are non-authentic Yoda voices, that when it comes time to throw down, Yoda is not always the voice of "wait, see what happens" but "okay, time to kick ass." And I am more aware of the voices that say win the race, go, go, go, that are the Yoda voice, not the masquerade, spiraling into unsuccess, the darkside. And I feel, almost as if the the force is with me, that all the missed calls, all the feints, are like some otherworldly, maybe Ben Kenobi, operating ethereal, making the world safe with me, because the more awareness I allow myself, the more I realize that the best I can do for myself is to let go, for now, until such a time, if any, that attachment permits, the unattainable. I realized as well, having Bill suggest that part of the comfort of pursuing the unattainable, the parental approval I seek in relationships, and that I'm most familiar not achieving, that part of the dynamic is playing out the unconditional affirmation I so hunger for, by projecting it on even people who are being, relatively, the shittiest of the shitty towards me, intimately so. That I say and act that I'm going to love you and affirm you no matter what, which again, has nothing to do with them. I'm also aware, looking at patterns, that no one is ever good enough, or performs well enough as well. The judgemental coming into play. I'll have to do it myself anyway, after all, because you have failed me, not surprisingly, once again. Which is all about not getting enough of it's okay growing up. It's amazing getting those dynamics into clearer focus. As I told Bill today, I'm just becoming more aware of those scripts in my life, and as they become clearer in focus, eventually, I hope to get them up on screen in a word processor and rewrite them. He said that the good news in all of this is that as an adult you can give yourself self love, that only your parents can give you as a child. It made me think of  a blog when I was ill, and I wish I remember the date, so I could reference it here, about being sick and caring for myself, being the vulnerable child and the parent at the same time. That's what adulthood, the path to self-actualization permits us, the ability to make ourselves whole. This is one of those activities, like working the Association for Retarded Citizens Recreatation and Respite program, that I always have some trepidation starting, especially as financially strapped as I am right now. And then, in the end, I'm thinking, shit. I wish I would've had another session, rather than fill in the blanks. Like the weekends I spent learning out in the woods with the allegedly unteachable, what good teachers they were. Shit, I need to have kids. And before that, a center to my compass. I know there will be trials and tribulations, but I've scrubbed excreta from walls, watched a three hundred pound obviously sexually abused woman act out sexually on a tree, and somehow convinced her to get to lunch on time, spent entire weekends with a camper whose language consisted of "tie shoe" or "poopy pants" or whatever bullshit abuse he was going through at the understaffed, underpaid daycare center, gotten a non-solid food eating camper to eat a Thanksgiving meal, something other than fucking baby food, had to stop that same camper from masturbating against the vibrating HOT furnace in the cabin, rechanneling, instead, into the privacy of the bathroom stall (masturbation is recreation, after all), and chased that same camper in the dark of the night, wandering off into the woods, far, far away from the campfire, and he could run pretty fast, and so, so so many other learning stories that I think the first time any of my kids come home drunk or fail a test or act shitty to their classmates, I'll be tempted to laugh and say, "This all you got! Why don't you poop on the walls, motherfucker. Then we'll talk negative attention seeking. Mofo." Damn. All that RAVEN group facilitation too. And the hotline. I am so, so ready to be the ultimate parent, that I may end up being a complete fuck-up at it. But I suspect, all in all, I'll do okay. If I can get over the details of actually finishing the race, hand in hand, not pursuing those who cannot love themselves, let alone love me. 2:37:16 AM