In talking there is always the chance of accidentally rescuing a broken friendship. In silence, only the grim certainty of continued death during life, a true shame on both of us, to share the short remainder of this brief moment when we are both alive and waste it in mutual anger.
Given the choice between redemption and condemnation always choose redemption when it is within reach.
(from Chapter 36 of The Intimate Lynch Mob)
There are two basic orientations toward our fellow creatures available to us, open or closed, predisposed toward healing or harming. We can behave with openness and vulnerability or protecting ourselves, projecting strength and a determination to never be hurt. We have a reflex toward healing, ourselves and those we care about, or protecting ourselves at all costs, even if it means harming others.
We can listen with patience, and react honestly, or close ourselves off, secretive, foreclosing dialogue and remaining protected, even if it means being dishonest and causing damage to others. To the latter type, the reflex to dishonesty is no vice because the stakes are your precious heart and soul, the essence of every sentient creature’s being.
To those oriented toward repelling threat, every bit of energy will be directed toward self-protection. Vulnerability is seen as weakness, contemptibly pathetic and even suicidal in an infinitely dangerous high stakes contest for dignity where only the strongest prevail.
To me, and pussies like me, the only prize truly worth having is someone you love feeling safe enough to make themselves vulnerable, because they know that the first instinct of your love will always be to protect them.
Then again, consider the source. This is coming from the insane bastard who sadistically tortured his best friend for over a year and refused to forgive him for some unspecified imaginary crime, so take it with a few grains of salt, eh?
The thing with someone who can never acknowledge they were wrong, or behaved hurtfully, is that it comes from a terrible insecurity. We all have insecurities, it is part of the human condition to wonder and compare yourself to an ideal you have of how you should be able to act in the world. People who can’t be wrong live in a different world than the rest of us fallible earthlings.
If you admit you’ve hurt somebody, it makes you a bad person, in their crabbed, black and white worldview. People who hurt others are bad, they need to be perfect, so it is impossible that they could have hurt someone without a very good reason. That reason is always the same: “that person who claims I hurt them, that liar, actually hurt me, really, really badly. I am the victim, not them! How dare that morbidly oversensitive defective attack my perfection, and expect me not to react!”
“I was only reacting, like any normal person would, reflexes got the best of me. You made me shoot you in the gut, because I was rightfully afraid you were going to attack me. You didn’t see that terrifying look on your face, I had to stand my ground. Everyone has a right to self-defense, that’s all I was doing when I shot you a few more times just to make sure you couldn’t get up and beat the living crap out of me, pistol whip me with my own gun. Don’t pretend that’s not exactly what you were thinking as you were lying there, fake bleeding!”
In my personal life I’ve recently experienced this insecurity on steroids, in my face so constantly I had to grapple with the underlying principle of how these emotionally driven motherfuckers truly believe they are acting righteously. Coming from a loved one, someone you’ve long trusted, it really fucks with your mind. A person who is sometimes wrong, who apologizes from time to time, cannot understand that for someone with crippling insecurity these simple human acts are impossible. The logic is not hard to understand, once you grasp the basic principle.
I am so insecure that any criticism or complaint against me is a deadly attack. I cannot be wrong, because everyone loves and respects me. I am an exemplary person. I will not be attacked by people with mental problems. You are insane if you don’t understand that you are wrong and I am right, no matter what.
You can’t reason with these good folks, they are beyond the reach of introspection, empathy or the ability to see nuance or take responsibility for the harm we all sometimes do to others. All they see is deadly threat, competition to the death and victory. Once you realize this about them, how paralyzed they are by insecurity and anger (which hardens immediately into implacable rage) during even the most minor conflict, the only thing you can do to preserve your integrity (and what’s left of your sanity) is follow the advice of the second best fortune cookie I ever opened:
This picture was taken in August of 2020. After years of watching so many beautiful feral kittens living their short, adorable lives, we decided we had to save this litter. A smart mother cat had dropped this batch off in Sekhnet’s garden, site of the neighborhood’s best cat buffet. Sekhnet was clever, these five never knew they were being turned into adoptable pets. They were all very willing and all five were quickly adopted. This is my favorite photo from that period, lost until a few moments ago.
The end.
My mother, Evelyn, who died thirteen years ago today, would have turned 95 years old yesterday. I had intended to write something touching about her, and started on this yesterday, but … shoot, sorry, mom.
I found myself sitting at the piano yesterday working out a song she used to sing, a popular ditty from the 1940s called Mairzy Doats. My father would be driving the car, we’d be on a longish trip somewhere, and suddenly my mother would burst into song, with only slight self-consciousness, imposed by her husband. He was also a good singer who’d soulfully croon a handful of notes, the hook of a beautiful ballad, and cut himself off after five or six syllables. My father was well-known for singing just enough to let you know that he could actually sing, but not a note more, and he was equally famous for inhibiting my mother’s singing.
Evelyn loved to sing and my father’s side-eye as he drove was not always enough to make her stop, though it did make her a little self conscious. Nonetheless, as we drove across some bridge she’d suddenly sing “Mairzy doats and dozy doats and little lamzy divey, a kiddleedivey too, wouldn’t you?”
Now all these years later, being a proficient guitar player finally, and surprised to find a certain facility on the keyboard lately, which helps me work out songs I’m trying to learn, I find Mairsy Doats is a pretty hip little tune to play, in a nostalgic, artfully written pop tune kind of way. The singer explains in the B part, “and though the words may sound queer to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey, say ‘mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.” And this B part, if I may say, I could play the hell out of this B part on the guitar, and it works out just fine on the keyboard, thank you.
And as I played and sang the song on the piano yesterday, with the sheet music from an actual paper song book, Songs of World War Two, which also, of course, had the lyrics, I called out “Happy Birthday, Mom!”
I thought to myself what a goddamn shame I couldn’t have played this simple, jumping accompaniment thirty or forty years ago and let my mom just sing it. Same with “Do Nothing till you Hear From Me” another genius tune from the genius Duke Ellington, my father would sing just that riff, with the opening line, the riff that Ellington placed over three different sets of chord changes to such brilliant effect. I could have backed both of them on a tenor ukulele, if things had been different.
But again, as in my mother’s actual life, my love and birthday greetings for her get mixed up in a lot of bullshit that has little or nothing to do with her.
It was my mother’s love, and, as I realize now, that she never gave me reason to doubt her love, that literally saved my life in the brutal war zone my sister and I were forced to grow up in. As I emailed the day before yesterday to a genius from high school (truly, one of only two I’ve ever met in this long life of mine):
Tomorrow I’ve got to write something sensitive about my mother, who’d be 95 tomorrow. I’ve realized only very recently that in spite of [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] she never let me doubt her love for me in that war zone I grew up in and in the end she always listened to me. Even if I couldn’t change her mind, which I sometimes did, she always eventually heard me out — which is no small thing. Probably saved my life, actually.
Thanks again, mom, for giving me life, and saving it time and again, by simply listening with an open mind and a loving heart.
❤️
Life affirming minute about love and real friemdship.
For the sheer wonder of it, its technical brilliance, its humanity and humor, its great story — if you haven’t seen it, prepare to be delighted. If you have, put your feet up for five minutes and you know what to do:
Whoops, go watch it on youTube!
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