http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/14
http://steveersinghaus.com/mediaplay/?p=744
http://100days2010sue.blogspot.com/2010/05/day-5-objects-are-louder-than-they.html
I is Me and She is Me
It’s just like one of those tests they gave me in the third grade when they were testing me for learning disabilities. Look at the picture and then tell me how many objects you remember. A Nintendo DS, a pink Fender electric guitar, an acoustic guitar leaning against the fireplace, an Audrey Hepburn-like woman staring back at me from the TV, twin framed photographs, a large brown sectional sofa. Did I remember enough? I was being tested for learning disabilities because my third grade teacher was going through a nasty divorce and decided to take her frustration out on someone. According to my mother’s narrative of my childhood, that someone was me. This is how I remember it: Rorschach tests, pencil tracing each side of a picture of a butterfly, first right handed, then left handed, being taken out of class by the school psychologist every day. I can’t remember whether it made me feel special or just different. It turns out that not only did I not have a learning disability, but I was blessed with an above average intelligence yet cursed with supreme intellectual laziness.
She pondered Steve Ersinghaus’ essay-was it on polygons or paragons? How could she have forgotten already; either way it didn’t matter, she would have to look up either word in the dictionary. Contextually she understood both words, but if pressed to define them, it would be difficult-though she would probably have an easier time defining paragon. She used to remember quotes from Shakespeare and Shelley (Percy Bysshe and Mary), Kurt Vonnegut and Catch-22. Now she remembers which account to post the annual subscription for the update to the frame machine, why it’s important to know who initiated the exchange when swapping new cars with a New York or New Jersey dealer, and the reason why Doug the mechanic was fired two years ago-it was because he took a customer’s car to Dunkin Donuts to get himself some breakfast before performing the authorized repair work. She used to have a MacGyver-like ability to fashion a bowl or a bong out of objects on hand-an apple, a toilet paper core, a friend’s mom’s decorative glass bottle. Now she was known for her Lumberg-like ability to clear a paper jam from any of the ancient objects that served as printers in her office.
She ran into an old friend at a bar when she went to see another old friend’s band play. This friend used to be her boss and now she had her own staff. Her former boss asked her: how are things going? This was after her fourth (fifth?) Stoli gimlet so it was easy for her to lie: Things are great, I have a great job, I’m married for three years now, we own our own place, and I have a niece I adore. In perspective, when compared to that other life of hers fifteen years ago, when this man was her boss, her life was “great”. Here, however, was the truth underneath her lie: things are mediocre at best, she had a decent-paying job that was sucking her soul, her marriage, while still to the love of her life, was a daily struggle since her grief and depression over the untimely and unexpected death of her father two and a half years ago, and her fierce love of her niece burned in her heart in painful contrast to her fruitless longing for a child of her own.
The collision of two things in my life has made me stop and consider the significance of “perspective” seriously and mindfully: weekly psychotherapy and hearing the word “narrative” used with increasing frequency. My mother, who is probably the smartest person I know, has always given me the sagest wisdom I have ever heard, even though it has taken me my entire 34 years to begin to put it into practice. You can’t change people, but you can always change the way you react to people. I am now beginning to realize that now I can take this to mean I can change how I react to myself and that no matter how good or bad or mediocre my life has been, I can still create my own life’s present and future narrative.
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