Monday, February 19, 2018

Paradox, Poetry, and Healing Our Big, Little Selves

In the two weeks since I last wrote, I started several different blogposts - about sex and intimacy, about talking with your teenager, about why it's hard to say 'no', about Valentine's Day and being single, and now this one.  It's been difficult to focus my attention on one thing because so much has happened to shift what I think is meaningful to write about on any given day.  So while I think all of those topics are interesting and I will probably revisit them.  We've had another mass, school shooting in the past week and there is much talk about mental health - something about which I am supposed to be an expert.  It seems the most pressing thing.

In times of great sadness and fear, when the weight of being human and the call to do something to help presses on me, when it feels that I don't have any ideas or energy left, I often go to poetry to comfort me.  And this week, I found myself with a poem that I've loved since I took my first writing workshop with Colleen McKee, a St. Louis poet, in 2006.  It's from a book called The Writer's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux and it taught me about how to bring a character to life and how poetry can be written in simple, straightforward language.  It's by Susan Browne, who I think is a Buddhist.

POEM IN MY MOTHER'S VOICE

When my mother meets God,
she says, Where the hell have you been?
Jesus Christ, don't you care about anyone 
but yourself?  It's time you wake up,
smell the coffee, shit or get off the pot.

You must have won your license in a fucking raffle.
You're grounded, and I don't want any back-talk.
In fact, don't talk at all until you can say something 
that is not a lie, until you can tell the truth.
You know, the truth?  Something in sentence form
that comes out of your mouth and is not a lie.
Could you do that for me?  Is this possible 
in my lifetime?  Don't ever lie to me again 
or I'll kill you.  And get off your high-horse.
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Running around the world
like a goddamn maniac, creating havoc.  You have lost
the good sense you were born with.  Shape up or ship out
I can't believe we're related.

My mother lights a cigarette, pitches the match
through the strings of a harp, inhales profoundly,
letting the smoke billow from her nose.
Her ruby lips press together in a righteous grimace
of disgust.  She never stops watching God.

I've really had enough this time.
What do you take me for?  A fool?  An idiot?  A patsy?
Some kind of nothing set down on earth for your convenience,
entertainment? A human punching bag?  For your information
I was not born yesterday.  I know what you're up to.
I have been around the block a few thousand spins of the wheel.
I have more compassion in my little finger
than you have in your entire body.  I am a mother.
I care.  Maybe you don't care, but I do.  Care.
Do you know what that word means?  Bring me the dictionary
and I will tell you what the word care means.  Never mind.
How could you find a dictionary in that dump you call a room.
The whole universe of care down the toilet
because of your dirty socks.  Do I look like a maid?
Did you think the purpose of my existence was to serve you?
You are barking up the wrong tree.  We need to get something 
straight.  I am not here for you.  I am here for me.
But I care.  Can you possibly, in your wildest imagination,
hold two ideas in your tiny mind at the same time?
This is called paradox.  Par-a-dox.  We need the dictionary.
No, we need to talk.  What do you have to say for yourself?

"I'm sorry," God replies.

You're sorry.  Well, that's not enough.  Wash that sullen look
off your face or I"ll wash it off for you.
And quit looking down.  Look at me!

God lifts his heavy head,
falls into the fierce love
of my mother's green-blue eyes.

Grow up, she says.

What comforts me about this poem is that it reminds me that our human condition is a paradox.

People might not think poetry is practical, but it is.

When we are straightforward and realistic, when we engage in political and civic thought and discussion, we are 'fighting' about whether this problem we have in our country is guns or mental health.  It is both.  We have to hold two ideas in our minds at one time.  More, even.

When we look at our technology, our phones, social media, the immediacy of all the information and opinions available to us, we wonder "Is this good or bad?"  It's both.

We ourselves are paradoxical - look at the mom in this poem.  What Susan Browne shows is that her mom can yell and cuss and berate, but something about her particular mom comes through - fierce love.  I don't think every parent who yells and berates also conveys fierce love, but this one does.

One of the most difficult things about being human right now is that there are many forces in the world that want to dumb you down.  To reduce you to your simplest form.

They want you to be smaller than your are - to think smaller than you are, to feel more petty that you are.  These forces are in the media, in social media, in the things you are addicted to or nearly addicted to, in the people who might be in your life.

At the end of the poem, the mom tells God to "Grow up."  That makes me laugh, but I think it's what embracing paradox is about.  There are moments in the media coverage of the aftermath of the shooting in Florida last week, where I see that the students are more grown up than many of the adults who also have a media platform on these issues.

I guess that's the paradox and wisdom of this poem too.  In some sense it's playful and simple, and in other ways it's very grown up and complex.  Sometimes people will say to me, "I read your blog and it seems like you've got it all figured out."  I don't.  I am trying, I make mistakes.  My kids might write funny poems about me one day, because I'm kind of weird.  But, I try to both play and be a grown up.

One of the things that has enhanced my weirdness is working in dying and grieving for so long.  And believe it or not, I am going to bring up back to paradox with a little anecdote about a makeup/skincare party I attended on Friday at a friend's house.  I don't always sit around thinking deep thoughts.  Sometimes I think about makeup.  This particular line of makeup is supposed to be natural and carcinogen-free.  That is it's mission.  I found myself thinking - "Ah, so what.  We're all going to die.  I'm not opposed to wiping some carcinogens on my face.  Especially if they reduce fine lines and wrinkles."  This was not what I was supposed to be thinking.  I was supposed to be fearful of dying and spend $80 on face cream.  And I'm not opposed to that either, in theory.  What I am saying is - I think often about how the time we get is limited. 

We are small, but we are big.  In what you do, in what you say, in how you love and who you love. We all will be dead one day, but it matters.  It is everything. 







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