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mallorys_cameraI wasn’t there, my memories aren’t important.
Like most Americans, I watched the tragedy unfold on TV.
Unbelievable? You could say that: I felt the distance. I wanted a closer connection, so I spent hours reviewing my list of potential contacts in the area: Could I claim to know anyone who was actually there? Could I pretend to be legitimately worried about someone’s safety? ‘Cause that would give me a legitimate stake in the disaster. Without that, all it was was a disaster movie.
I wasn’t prepared for how neatly and finally, with what fine surgical precision, the terrorist attacks divided my life and the collective life of the nation into a Before and After. Details of the After have been formulating and reformulating ever since – it’s an alternate universe in which we’re all wearing electronic handcuffs, have invisible tracking systems implanted in our frontal lobes.
No, it wasn’t like that before.
The most immediate fallout? I had been walking Xena the Dog through the Presidio every morning. The Presidio had barracks but it also had a hiking trail that led to the top of Huckleberry Hill, the highest point in Monterey. I was still mourning my mother’s death and I had worked out a bizarre little ritual that involved counting the wild blue coast iris: If I counted even one more iris than I had the day before, that meant my mother was happy on the other side of the river, in whatever afterlife she had chosen for herself.
But on September 12, armed guards stopped me from entering the Presidio. “You’re not authorized to pass,” a young man in a military with a shaved head and tattoos told me bluntly.
And this could be the motto for the subsequent portion of my life, couldn’t it? You’re not authorized to pass…
###
Beyond humiliating, Susan and Max’s clean out of all my worldly possessions. They took most of them to the dump. That wasn’t at all the way Susan had explained the cleanout operation to me over the phone: “Listen, I own all those buildings in West Oakland. I’ll just store your stuff in one of those basement.”
I couldn’t do anything, of course. I’d lost control over my own life. Other people were making the important decisions.
I should be grateful, right? Like Uriah Heap.
But all I felt was violated and betrayed.
FUCK YOU, Max. Have a great life. I set you up well on that account, so you should. But I never, ever want to see you again or Susan either. Just forget that I exist, it’ll be easier for everyone that way.
Of course a week from now I won’t feel like this. And maybe not even tomorrow.
But then again, maybe I will.
Like most Americans, I watched the tragedy unfold on TV.
Unbelievable? You could say that: I felt the distance. I wanted a closer connection, so I spent hours reviewing my list of potential contacts in the area: Could I claim to know anyone who was actually there? Could I pretend to be legitimately worried about someone’s safety? ‘Cause that would give me a legitimate stake in the disaster. Without that, all it was was a disaster movie.
I wasn’t prepared for how neatly and finally, with what fine surgical precision, the terrorist attacks divided my life and the collective life of the nation into a Before and After. Details of the After have been formulating and reformulating ever since – it’s an alternate universe in which we’re all wearing electronic handcuffs, have invisible tracking systems implanted in our frontal lobes.
No, it wasn’t like that before.
The most immediate fallout? I had been walking Xena the Dog through the Presidio every morning. The Presidio had barracks but it also had a hiking trail that led to the top of Huckleberry Hill, the highest point in Monterey. I was still mourning my mother’s death and I had worked out a bizarre little ritual that involved counting the wild blue coast iris: If I counted even one more iris than I had the day before, that meant my mother was happy on the other side of the river, in whatever afterlife she had chosen for herself.
But on September 12, armed guards stopped me from entering the Presidio. “You’re not authorized to pass,” a young man in a military with a shaved head and tattoos told me bluntly.
And this could be the motto for the subsequent portion of my life, couldn’t it? You’re not authorized to pass…
Beyond humiliating, Susan and Max’s clean out of all my worldly possessions. They took most of them to the dump. That wasn’t at all the way Susan had explained the cleanout operation to me over the phone: “Listen, I own all those buildings in West Oakland. I’ll just store your stuff in one of those basement.”
I couldn’t do anything, of course. I’d lost control over my own life. Other people were making the important decisions.
I should be grateful, right? Like Uriah Heap.
But all I felt was violated and betrayed.
FUCK YOU, Max. Have a great life. I set you up well on that account, so you should. But I never, ever want to see you again or Susan either. Just forget that I exist, it’ll be easier for everyone that way.
Of course a week from now I won’t feel like this. And maybe not even tomorrow.
But then again, maybe I will.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 02:51 pm (UTC)"but just imagine how good it would feel to come home to a clean apartment! you wouldn't even have to make any decisions about what you want to keep, you wouldn't even know what is gone..." She says.
And I was all: Look, I've got an apricot pit up there that I think about all the time. An Apricot pit...
Anyway, I just wanted you to know I'm still reading and wishing there was something I could do for you. My silence hasn't been indifference, it's just been distractions and toil.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 03:21 pm (UTC)I keep telling myself: It's just stuff. Who cares about stuff? And the truth is: I don't.
I think it's more about the loss of control: Other people making decision that I should be making, other people poking through stuff that's important to me and deciding it's not important, other people sitting in judgment on me. Yeah, right: They LUV me. They're doing it out of KINDNESS, their good deed for the month. Fuck 'em.
I guess situations like this is where the expression, "Killing someone with kindness" arose.
The really sad thing is that I only drink and drug minimally and so have no way to chase the utter humiliation of the experience out of my head.
But thanks for what you wrote. Coming from you, it means something.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 05:32 pm (UTC)Oh, dear gods, may I bitchslap them to Nova Scotia for you?
no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 05:52 pm (UTC)This is what I do for a living, help people go through their lifetime of "stuff" and make decisions; the key to our success is respect and a non-judgmental approach. Max and Susn struck out big time on both.
They could've allowed you to be there during the process via text or emails with photos, to remind you what was in this box or that, and ask for your input to minimize the feelings of violation and loss of control.
I hope you let them know that they fucked up royally. And again, I'm sorry.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 09:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 09:29 am (UTC)To do it all under the fake promise of putting it into storage is the worst part.
Don't feel humiliated, you didn't do anything wrong.
Tyler Durden: The things you own end up owning you.
Date: 2011-09-12 06:52 pm (UTC)It became my job to throw away forty years of his things. Books. Art. Files. Computers. Pictures. Cards. Correspondence. Glassware. Chemicals. Prescription pads by the case. An entire laboratory. It took four months.
After that I stopped caring about physical items and the concept of ownership so much.
Trite, perhaps - but Chuck Palahniuk got one thing right.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 12:21 pm (UTC)Explaining it to me later Susan said, "But nobody knows when or even if you're coming back to California! So the stuff would just have sat there in boxes and mildewed."
There is some logic to that. But again, it's not the process I thought was going to happen.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 12:23 pm (UTC)Re: Tyler Durden: The things you own end up owning you.
Date: 2011-09-15 12:27 pm (UTC)Thing is there are developmental phases in adults' lives even as there are developmental phases in children's lives. And Tyler Durden and I -- and you -- are in different developmental phases.
I'm at the tail end of the developmental phase where people collect physical things to consolidate their existence on the planet.
You're still in the free-floating experimental phase where things are mostly a hindrance -- or should be mostly a hindrance, because God knows there are a lot of materialists in your cohort. I think they're out of synch though.
The loss of stuff therefore is going to have a profound effect on me, make me feel like a failure, yada, yada, yada, the old familiar song and dance.
Re: Tyler Durden: The things you own end up owning you.
Date: 2011-09-15 01:36 pm (UTC)I recognize your station in life is more advanced than my own and respect it - and the level of experience that comes with it. Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brains.