A Methylated Love Saga, The Long View & Transparency

[mallorys_camera]

On my birthday I cracked open the box of books wailaki sent me. (And thanks again, wailaki! Bad manners are not the only reason I haven't yet sent a real thank you note. My life is so crazy right now I don't have time to breath. Sadly that is not an exaggeration.)

Between three-thirty and seven, I read Alice Munro's elegant and beautiful The View From Castle Rock, a collection of… well, no – not short stories. Creation myths. Late in her life, Munro became interested in the history of her family, lending her voice to select members. Munro is a genius at conjuring complex personalities from a few curt lines of dialogue and throwaway details. It always comes as a shock at the end of one of these stories to discover these complex personalities have been dead for a very long time. Munro and Shakespeare are the only two authors I know who write convincingly from this kind of long view. (Maybe Gabriel Garcia Marquez does too but him I've only read in translation.)

After that, I putzed around with Larry McMurtry's All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers for an hour or so. I'm a big McMurtry fan. But selective – I don't care much for his Westerns, think The Last Picture Show is brilliant but didn't like any of its sequels. No, the McMurtry novels I like are that cluster about a cast of characters who meet in the Rice University library around 1972, Patsy Carpenter and Flap Horton and Danny Deck.

Then I got up.

Note from Robin on the kitchen table, scribbled in his own execrable hand: 11:55: threw up pasta. Fever 101.3. I took ibuprofen.

Damn!

Robin had been sick since Monday, had thrown up at school twice in fact. Stomach pains on the right – I'd stayed up Monday and Tuesday night agonizing about appendicitis.

I was pretty sure he was fully recovered and had written this note only because he'd been up past his bedtime and didn't want to have to wake up early to go to school.

But I just didn't want to get into it with him.

And I thought for the millionth time how unfair this whole reversal of fortune thing has been on Robin. Such a smart kid, but directionless, without any kind of discipline. I just don't have the stamina to impose that discipline, or the money to nominate some other institution to play in loco parentis.

So unfair to him…

Annie called; Susan emailed. Max showed up at my office place at the Number 2 job – he was down in Monterey giving a symposium on slam poetry at All Saints. Max had dedicated a poem to me which he read out loud while we walked along the oceanfront:

My first class ever was Mysticism 101,
Taught to by my mom when I was young.
At around the age of four,
I used to sit at the kitchen table and read books
About the universe
And when I say read I mean look at pictures,
Scrutinize, stare at pictures, rotating every planet
On every page until I got dizzy. The Milky Way became
A spiral galaxy vortex, an extra terrestrial toilet flush,
Constellations melting into constellations that formed a swirling
Lollipop in space and taught me that somehow, everything
Is interconnected.

See when I was young, there was poetry everywhere.
Red wasn’t just a color, it was a taste, smell, emotion,
And my best friend. I hadn’t yet learned the rules of arithmetic
And borders were just squiggly lines separating different colors
That my mom told me some people called countries.
And at around the age of four, I had never been to a church,
But I was convinced God looked something like my mom,
Because she was the prettiest person I had ever seen.

And there was poetry everywhere, red, bleeding through and blending
Outlines that separated all things form each other.
And at around the age of four, I was never told
Anything different. I’d ask, “Mom, what if all the tiny pieces
Of our bodies are little universes?” And she’d say,
“You know what? I think they just might be…”
And I’d ask, “Mom what are wishes?” And she’d say “wishes are our prayers to ourselves.” And I’d ask, “Mom, where does love come from?”
And she told me it’s something magical.

And I learned so much at that kitchen table, with nothing but a picture book and
My mom looking over my shoulder. But within a year, I had had my first day of school
And eventually, I learned to read and write, and suddenly the pictures became smaller and smaller.

And now, I’m a well-educated, negligent son. Too busy with school work I see my mom every once in a while, and now it’s her asking me questions:
Max, How are you doing? Why aren’t you eating? Max, have you met any pretty girls at college? What are you learning?

I’ve been trained from a young age to craft words that say, so I tell her “I’m well, Mom”, “I’m a poor student, mom.” “Don’t hold your breath for grandchildren just yet, mom.”

But I have to ask myself again, “What am I learning?” And suddenly, I want to paint my mom a picture of the methylated love saga between transcription factors and chromatin, how they open up like the gates of Troy during Spring just as the flowers are blooming under the gorgeous skirts of beautiful women who like ballerinas blithely float histone complex onto my olfactory neurons which trigger dopamine to be sent to the reward pathways in my prefrontal cortex..

Mom, I’m a biology major, and that’s where love comes from. And yes, it’s something magical. I want to paint her a picture of this thing most people call reality, bundled in blue clouds, floating form the minds of Einstein, Heisenberg, and Darwin, the greatest poets of the last two centuries, who did not write poems, but merely pointed to the poetry that nature speaks which is unity.

And I’m realizing now that my mom may have been the greatest teacher I ever had. But I left her at a young age, around the age of four, and since then I’ve been trained to craft words that say, so I say, “Mom, I’m learning each day. Learning more about definitions and boundaries each day until they seem countless and infinite, like the stars that sacrifice their identities in order to swirl into each other and form the Milky Way.

And I’m wondering if I wasn’t better off before I stepped onto that school bus on that first day, because now my words that say just want to become poetry that shows, and my poetry just wants to become a painting that’s something magical.

Then when I got back to the office, I deleted my LiveJournal.

Not really sure why.

Except – it had something to do with transparency.

I wanted to be transparent.

And I wasn't. I couldn't be. Too many people I had connections with in what we laughingly call Real Life had stumbled across my LJ, were reading it from time to time, and that meant I couldn't be honest about what was happening to me without risking their judgment – What a fucking train wreck! Only it wasn't about their judgment. It was about me.

There's really no sense in keeping an online journal at all if you don't make it public. I mean, I guess LJ is a good place to store things in case of fire or computer crashes. But other than that, why publish at all if you don't want the world to read?

Deleting my LJ had predictable results. I started to feel bad. Very, very sorry for myself. The kind of self-pity where your eyes seep victims' tears and your nose runs ropes of clear snot.

So at the end of the day I activated it again.

Don't know what I'm going to do about the transparency issue though. Seems my only fall-backs are black humor and a kind of relentless honesty. Doesn't work for me if I have to censor either.

Comments

[justpat.livejournal.com]

Happy Belated Birthday!

I realized too late that by ignoring my own, I was ignoring yours as well.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

We are the PDi Birthday Twins!

I hope you didn't really ignore your birthday...

[wailaki.livejournal.com]

That poem! it made ME cry, and he's not even mine. Let me know when you've waded through the books; I have more. One of the consolations of being totally isolated is that you can read as much as you like. On a purely selfish note, I really hope you don't delete yr journal. It is one of the lights I look for every night.

[a1icey.livejournal.com]

Einstein, Heisenberg, and Darwin, the greatest poets of the last two centuries, who did not write poems, but merely pointed to the poetry that nature speaks which is unity.

i wish i had read that before my presentation last thursday, it's so on point that it would have been the perfect headline.

for me, your livejournal serves the purpose of not letting me forget where you are, physically, psychologically, socially, emotionally. and for being where i am right now, no amount of money could pay for therapy that good.

[nokomisjeff.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you didn't delete your journal. I savor every one of your posts like a fine brandy.

Jeff

[fallen-x-ashes.livejournal.com]

I also, am really glad you didn't delete your journal because I enjoy your writing so.

And also, Happy Birthday!

I suppose you could look into varying levels of custom friends groups and private entries if you want to maintain your privacy.

[fallen-x-ashes.livejournal.com]

And wow, that poem is really amazing. I have a few science/biology types on my own journal. Would it be okay if I reproduced it with credit, or maybe quoted a small part of it and linked them here?

[blackhilllife.livejournal.com]

Do not deprive us, your friends here, of you.

I don't believe you are judged by anyone here. You are admired, for the honesty...the image...

[lacachet.livejournal.com]

Your boy thinks well of you, doesn't he? That would make me cry, if he were mine, I think. :)

[ch.livejournal.com]

I’m realizing now that my mom may have been the greatest teacher I ever had.

that counts for something, a lot really, everything, no?

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

max's poem is so wonderful- i can't imagine a better gift

and i have been reading a lot of alice munro in my seminar- i have a whole collection (the progress of love) waiting for me when my work load lessens a bit. i linked to the title story of the view from castle rock in my journal, but i'm not sure anyone actually read it- it's pretty long to scroll down through, i guess.

i can barely remember when i had a public journal. it's so hard for me. sometimes i wonder why i write for a select group of people when what i write about can be pretty repetitive. if it's personal and repetitive, why should i think they care? yet i know that the people on my friends list and their lives and comments on my own have increasingly become a comfort to me.

i don't know anyone else like you, and i admire you greatly. i think and talk about you often- i don't know if that sounds too strange, but i would have missed you and your journal so much had you left it deleted.

[mallemaroking.livejournal.com]

Wow--that is an amazing poem and a touching tribute. I can't think of anything better than being credited with expanding a world rather than reducing it. He has quite the gift.
I'm glad, too, that you have opted to keep the journal.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh, I won't delete it. Part of the interactive fun is pitching the occasional melodramatic snit.

On a book note, do you read Sue Miller? If you don't, you should -- you'd really like her.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Writing is good therapy, so true. I think I would have liked Max's poem a lot even if I wasn't related to him -- methylated love saga between transcription factors and chromatin, how they open up like the gates of Troy during Spring is very, very good...

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you. And like I said, if it would help to have a human ear at three in the morning when you're thinking about your loss, give a holler -- I'm a good listener and sometimes having that helps.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Big issue for me is that I don't actually want to maintain my privacy -- I just don't want there to be any reprecussions in my real life from what I write here.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

If I'd written the poem, I'd say sure. But my kid wrote it, and performs it -- so I probably better say no.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Your honesty is what I so admire about you as well.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes -- it made me teary. Honestly, I remember those sunny days in the kitchen when he was three or four so well. I didn't think he remembered them at all.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Really everything.

But then there's the material world...

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

What do you think of Alice Munro? I couldn't get into her until I was around 40 -- I found her prose style uninteresting and her characters rather dull.

And then at 40 -- bam. I got it.

I think it's that "long view" of her that I so inarticulately tried to describe. Sort of like her stories are the fossils of personality and human behavior that survive after someone is dead.

It's not really talked about very much but there are developmental phases in reading as in evverything else.

Thank you for saying you admire me. That touches me, and means a lot.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Yes, he's an interesting kid. I'm honored that he gives me some of the credit, I tried very hard to put my educational philosphies into play when I was raising him. I guess they were successful. :-)

[wailaki.livejournal.com]

Read 'em all, and await the next. "The Good Mother" was my favorite, also "In the Forest" (?). Contemporary women novelists are what I read mostly. Right now "Olive Kitteredge" - stories from Maine.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

LOVED The Good Mother! Her first novel, her best book. Just finished In the Forest -- very hot sex scene between the underage Daisy and her aging roue seducer!

[a1icey.livejournal.com]

yes, and you can sense the slam in it

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

i think my seminar professor was pretty conscious of that with the munro that she has assigned us- in fact, i'm absolutely sure she was because she's said almost the same thing about her writing as you. she talks a lot about how she admires munro for her fearlessness, and the different subject matters and techniques she's focused on over time.

that being said, in what i have read, it's really her characters that make me want to read more of her! i know a lot of people in my class find her stories too slow or too long. it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly what about her characters draws me in, but i think it most closely relates to their decision making? the way her characters take on their own lives and make decisions is maybe the most realistic and subtle (fictional) description of the human decision making process i've come across so far- particularly when thinking of the contemporary writers i've been reading more recently.