Significant
women in my life, those I came to know well, were at birth
delivered/attended
by some difficulty similar to my own. Revealed
by mom, whether in anger or in response to my curiosity, I cannot now
remember. But the birth was difficult for her: fifty-eight
hours of dry labor alone.
For
me, this birthing process, leaving one mode of life for another, is
reminiscent of those times I wish I'd never been born. Difficult,
principally
for
encountering my vanities, the much and many articles of things
annotating passages from indifference to self care, if not love of
self.
For
the second night in a row I have awoken beset with a frenzy to
capture quotes made by women I’d never heard of and cannot,
obviously, know. But
then I have an unusual and unreasonable fondness and reverence for
women generally. By which I have, after a long time, begun to know
the difference is not merely physical, but profoundly psychological
in their attitudes towards life itself Great stamina, long term
strength, devotion and dedication to the on going of all life.
Of
the men I’ve known well, but never so well as women, they were
without exception reverent to a
woman
as equals. Refusing to inhabit a half-world wherein women are
secondary, victims or slaves.
Significantly,
as part of my daily methodology, I weave,
back-and-forth
between writing and collecting quotes. In the process I discovered
Pam had sent me an email, once more, lifting my head above the
despondency of sorting through my vanities. What I had hoped to leave
at the time of my death to others. Who in their turn would merely
dispose of things I must considered to carry forward or abandon
meticulously. There
is very little that I identify with in terms of articles or
furnishings. Yet buried beneath piles of neglect are things of actual
value; the remains of what I failed to destroy or abandon in the
past.
130621
MDT 06:05
Wringing
my peace is dawn this longest day of the year. Fears that I seldom
addressed, possibly the last? Hopefully! The love I know and
anticipate is beset with concern that I will, as I was in childhood,
be a ‘bad person’. Annie, my companion, a cat, is one of many
pets beginning in infancy, to accompany me through life. Their lives
truncated by accident, disease and disappearance . . . or disappeared
from my keeping, as first was later discovered in the keeping and
companionship of my mothers uncle John. Mozart lived twenty years and
prior to my discovery I never knew where my crib mate went.
Of
the women I have loved, desiring companionship with, unreasonably,
both are fond, no, more like, love animals unreasonably; at that, all
animals. Mother, however was not one. Since
as a child she brought home stray kittens and her mother drowned them
in front of my mother; poverty being a stern teacher. That said,
whenever a cat or dog escaped from her keeping it was always my fault
for which I was beaten both physically and emotionally savagely. In
retrospect I have begun to conclude all lives given into our care and
concern have their own agenda, fate and destiny over which it is not
totally incumbent upon us to die bereaved at their loss. Then
too there is the simple realization that the animals did flee the
‘home’ mother provided them being in essence house pets. As
with pets so with me until now the last fears wrung from me. Stasis
has caused me anguish beyond my endurance daily in process
progressing towards the inevitable move. An unknowable, until now,
expectation of grief beyond endurance should Annie run away, be
accidentally killed or terrified beyond my ability to reassure her
that she will be well in our new home and family; Pam has two dogs,
both of whom have lived with cats before.
Animals
seem to have an instinct for what we are personally, benign or
fearful. In fact many characteristics I might once attribute to
myself as intuition have apparently evolved into and ability to
assess potential friends leading me to trust both M & P
emphatically.
In
recent converse with M I said; “It’s all your fault, you did
after all suggest I volunteer for hospice service!” In significant
ways they are clones. Lending me an organic sense of our
relationships as divinely given and ineluctable/ineludible
[archaic]/inescapable/unavoidable. A fate and destiny towards I go.
Albeit, until recently, haltingly. Giving
away possessions possessing me appropriately to others who will make
good use of them. Annie, however, is entirely another matter for she
is a friend since our joining one another five years ago.
Startled
to realize that time frame roughly describes the current tenure of my
friendship with M . . . a love that will extend beyond the distance
between us and/or life. Convicting
me that we are, all one family in life, stemming from Mozart, both
the cat and composer, who slept with me in my crib through
my long lonely life.
Until
now that is.
Did
I just say “long lonely life”? Yes. Until recent time I have
considered myself poison, a bad person, unwilling to be completely
real to anyone including myself. What began with M will go on, a
process of becoming a whole person. Better
and better—day
by day.
130620 MDT 03:00 birth
© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All
Rights Reserved
