Going “Home”

Right around this time of year, I begin to doubt myself and  I become preoccupied with things that usually take a backseat to the rigmarole of my daily life.  I pay more attention to the girth of my thighs, the distinction of my jaw line, whether or not one eye looks bigger than the other (ok, I admit this is a year-round preoccupation of mine as someone who applies her eye-liner every morning in a moving vehicle).  It’s not just that this my “self-criticizing” time which often coincides with my monthly “lady time.”  This is the time of year when my outward-gazing eyes are replaced with my mother’s piercingly and unforgivingly perceptive ones.  I see myself through her almond-shaped, cosmetically altered-permanently-outlined mother-eyes as she will see me when we meet on Christmas Day.

Perhaps, that description sounds too harsh, even for a Korean mother.  Her eyes will survey my new haircut.  If she likes it, she’ll go out and get her hair cut exactly the same way.  She likes to fabricate a resemblance between us.  We both know I am the spitting image of my father.  If she doesn’t like my hair, she’ll say “It looks very nice from the back.”  Her eyes pick up every detail.  She’ll examine my hands to see if I have been wearing the rubber gloves she bought me when she came to visit in the summer, admonishing me that “a woman’s hands must remain soft no matter what kind of work she does.” She’ll take in my best winter outfit and most likely see the subtle evidence of alteration on my pea coat.  After all, the coat was a Christmas present from her two years ago.  Her seamstress eyes will see that I had the buttons moved over an inch to accommodate the weight I’ve gained since the last time I wore it but the biggest and hardest question her eyes always ask is “Are you happy?”  Since I’ve been married, the question has become “Is he making you happy, because if he isn’t I promise I will hunt him to the ends of the earth and make him pay and you can come back and live with me….”

I haven’t lived with my mother in over eight years but I still call it “going home.”  I went to the other side of the country to attend college and I stayed here with every intention of never returning to the South….to live. Still, I have this desire for my mother to know how I live, who I’ve grown up to be, my values, how I’ve moved beyond the ways she has inadvertently messed me up and how I haven’t.  I don’t have the words to explain all this to her….Seriously, I don’t have the vocabulary in the language she understands.  When we’re together, occupying the same space, somehow, we make it work.  With my elementary Korean and her elementary English, I can communicate something of my life to her but then, a few days after Christmas, I’m gone again with so much left unsaid.

I remember the girls in college who talked to their mothers every day.  They talked of their classes, their love interests, the books they were reading, evidence that they were “close” with their moms.  I can’t imagine my mother any closer.  She is the voice in my head, for better or worse.  I never told her about my crushes.  She didn’t read my thesis.  She’s never seen me at work.  She just wants to know that I am doing “well” but “well” in her mind is something more.  ”Well” is “perfection.”  She wants to know that her daughter is out in the world and kicking its ass.

…I’m not kicking any ass. I am tired and crippled by doubt and insecurity and the pair of them  nest in the same warm hole as my need to do “well.”  I don’t know if she can appreciate the irony.

Karl Malone

I find I have irrational prejudices that surface at unexpected times.  I was watching the NBA play-offs and the camera held a brief close-up on Paul Pierce.  In that moment, I had this sudden realization that, given the chance, I would punch Paul Pierce in the face.  It has nothing to do with race, class or even professional athletics.  I feel the same way about Carson Daily.  Perhaps, I pre-judge male celebrity figures. No, it can’t be.  I would also have to restrain myself from hurting Tyra Banks.

My mother has an almost clinical aversion to Jim Carey.  She just doesn’t like his face.  She also believes James Woods to be an evil man.  She ascribes to her own brand of physiognomy.  She unapologetically judges the character of others by their facial features.  Maybe, I subconsciously believe in this pseudo-science too.  When my eyes happen upon Paul Pierce, Carson Daily, George Clooney, Colin Farrell, a certain waiter at my favorite Greek restaurant…I want to crush my exceptionally small fists into their throats.  (I don’t know why we don’t see more throat punches, it seems like a logical place.)

I’m sure if I analyzed it, if I did some self-reflection, I would understand why these faces ignite such violent desires from my pacifist soul.  Here is an example…Karl Malone….yes, the Mailman.  I strongly dislike Karl Malone.  I didn’t understand for a long time but then I remembered the 1996-1997 season.  The Utah Jazz challenged the irrepressible Chicago Bulls and lost.  It’s not the games I remember.  It was my brother’s passionate outbursts at the television.  He hated Karl Malone.  Therefore, I hated Karl Malone, just like I hated moo (not the sound a cow makes but a kind of radish used in Korean cooking).  He hated the soft floating masses in his soup.  So, I hated them too.  My brother’s enemies were mine enemies.  My loyalty was fierce from an early age.  I trailed after him on my three-wheeler.  I cheered him on (from a distance) when he picked fights with older boys (and threw rocks at them, again, from a distance).  But I’m older now and have outgrown my three-wheeler.  I shouldn’t hold on to a decade-long grudge against someone who was, actually, a very consistent power forward.

I release you, Karl Malone, from my irrational hatred and I hope if I ever do see you in public, you will allow me to embrace your thigh.

Yet, there are still those others I mentioned.  Why do I dislike them?  Maybe, reader, you’ve already thought it in your own mind.

Because they are douchebags.

I have recently read an enlightening article on the subject,  ”5 Douchebag Behaviors Explained by Science”

It is posted on a humor site, but it does give us pause.  Can we simply dismiss these douchebags?  There are deep-rooted reasons why they are the way they are.  Should we not pity them and help them toward genuine self-discovery and emotional maturity?  The AA model has been very successful.  We could provide a 12 step program for these individuals which would include admitting their disease, apologizing for every conversation they monopolized, a simple mantra of “I am not the shit, I am not the shit…” and maybe a simple make-over to rid their closets of tight shirts with collars popped, remove the Chinese-lettering tattoos from their over-tanned arms….wait, there should be regional chapters of Douchebag Anonymous.  What I described was the typical Southern douchebag.  I have not yet tapped the iceberg of the Silverlake or Williamsburg varieties.  Perhaps, I cannot yet begin to talk of them.  Sometimes, things hit too close to home.

Saint Barbara

I recently went to Santa Barbara.  I ate lobster, sat in a garden, sketched my husband’s profile, petted strange dogs…it was a nice vacation.  I got to thinking about Santa Barbara.  I never knew there was a Saint Barbara.  I guess I just know of the obvious ones; the ones claimed by countries like St. George or St. Andrew.  I am no hagiographer.  That’s a person who studies saints. I remember it distinctly because I was reading Fifth Business by Robertson Davies (thus the latter half of my blogging alias).  I was 14.  It was assigned to my older brother but he did not read what was assigned to him, choosing instead to read books with embarrassing cover illustrations of dragons and scantily-clad elf-maidens. ….but The Deptford Trilogy of which Fifth Business is the first, became my favorite book and the subject of my undergraduate thesis.  I still love the word, hagiographer, and my brother still has not read Fifth Business in spite of my remonstrations.

Am I the only one with word-memories?  Beyond the usual everyday vocabulary, there are words we acquired in some way.  These ways are our mutual friends.  When I think of the word, monarchy, I think of the Lion King.  The bird, Zazu, sings “If this is where the monarchy is headed, count me out!”  Perhaps, I had heard this word before in 5th grade Social Studies but I did not care to know the meaning of the word until that animated hornbill sang it.

For me, Sinister was a villain on X-Men (the animated series) before it was a diabolical adjective.

I was writing of Saint Barbara before.  I will return.  Before I had a chance to read the story of Saint Barbara, I thought of the many things that came to mind when I thought of the name, Barbara.  St. Barbara, in my mind, must be the patron saint of:

- crystal candy bowls set out for visitors (and not for you!)

- cozies you put over your tissues boxes and toilet paper

-the beehive hair-do

-Virginia Slim cigarettes

-jean jackets embellished with rhinestones

She is invoked in the times of awkwardness created by old lady flatulence.  She is with you in epic games of pinochle and bridge. You ask for her intercessions when you have fallen down and cannot get up.

(It might be important to say that St. Barbara is actually the patron saint in time of danger from thunderstorms, fires and sudden death.  She is the patroness of artillerymen.  She is invoked for aid against accidents resulting from explosions.)

On truths and not-so-truths

I recently watched that Charlie Kaufman film. I call it a Charlie Kaufman film not because he wrote it but because he directed it and film is a director’s medium and theatre is primarily an actor’s medium. So, we have a film director writing and directing a movie about a theatre director. It’s a play within a play within a play within a play…..within a movie. How….fecund!

I love it when I find just the right word; it’s as satisfying as biting into a fresh slice of Korean pear.

I didn’t set out to write a film review. In fact, I often hate walking out of a genuinely interesting theatre experience and being asked about it. There’s this self-conscious hunger I see in other people’s eyes. They want to know. Did you like it? What do you think that movie was about? I want to know before I launch into the analytical report I rehearsed in my head. You say it first so I can validate my thoughts.

I despise it. It feels…phony. I’m Holden Caulfield on Broadway.

I’m digressing. What I really wanted to write about was narration, truths and not-so-truths. The protagonist of the Kaufman film persistently attempts to make meaning of the string of events that make up his life. His attempts culminate in a massive theatrical endeavor that involves a recreation of New York inside of a warehouse. Ultimately, he tries to make sense of his life the way we all do, through narration. He, like Herbert, thumbs his nose at the conventions of his day.

I envy no man’s nightingale or spring;

Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme

But what are we left with? Our tools are soiled. Here we come to an impasse. We want to make meaning of our lives but we don’t want to embrace the reality that we are making it. We arrogantly want to claim that we searched the mire of philosophy, human joy and tragedy and found truth but that, in and of itself is a story that we put ourselves in, a story that we narrate and any good story needs “not-so-truths.” It’s inevitable. In the process of making the story, we leave things out, details we don’t include because it escaped our observations, Because we were always inclined not see what didn’t fit.

So, we want to find something “pure, real…true” and our minds can only make sense through a process of classifying, of organizing. Then we must express it; render it in some way.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born

….or better yet

Reader, I married him.

Yet, whether or not we make better use of our words than Mr. Dickens or Ms. Bronte, we only have all that they had….stories.

To make my meaning, I need the words, the stories I make-up and the stories that have made me but they are already impure, adulterated.  By their very nature, they are not-s0-true.  But I don’t really mind.  It’s the only way I’ll get close.

things that frighten me

I’ve had a series of dreams which include the same terrifying occurrence of silent screaming. The situations change but in each, I try to scream and no sound escapes my mouth. I say dream, not nightmare, deliberately. Some of the scenarios of my dreams play like bad horror movies that are inadvertently hilarious. In the most recent dream, I am trying on lingerie in a department store, only the door to my dressing room are the swinging doors of an out-of-the way saloon in a spaghetti western movie. You know, with the head, shoulders knees and toes (knees and toes) visible but all the naughty bits covered. I’m struggling with some black lacey thing and pulling it up underneath an over-sized Clint Eastwood poncho. A grizzled old-man of the Coleridge persuasion makes an attempt to push the swinging doors open. He doesn’t seem to want to harm me and my first instinct is to say something like you would say when someone accidentally starts to open the door to the public restroom you are presently occupying “Someone’s in here…Hey, hey! Someone is in here!” It’s an odd thing to say when you think about it. Any kind of sound/noise would notify the intruder of an occupant….but I think it’s in our nature to say obvious things in awkward situations…like… “I seem to have the wrong room or I have wet myself.”

So the grizzled old man, this Ancient Mariner, continues forward into my dressing room to tell me his tale of woe of the high…desert? and I have to keep the swinging doors shut with my hands. I scream and then….nothing, no sound. I can’t even hear myself scream in my own head. I’m partly awake and I know I’m thrashing around in my sheets with my mouth wide open, a tearing feeling in my throat but nothing..not even an infinitesimal decibel of vocal reverberation. It’s terrifying. This got me thinking about other things that scare me shitless. I’ve made a list:

Screaming without making actual sound

Wheelers (from Return to Oz) You know they’re coming because the wheels (which they have instead of hands and feet) make this horrible squealing….and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Being eaten by Hagfish (from the Planet Earth series) There’s this deep sea fish…you can’t even call them fish! Fish are not scary but this abomination from the underworld doesn’t even have a jaw. This blind beast has a rasping tongue. It latches itself to your leg and then ties itself into a knot and then pushes that knot up their body until the knot is against you to create leverage and pull their heads to tear out a mouthful of flesh. When they accomplish this, they can SWIM INTO YOUR BODY TO EAT YOU!!

*Hagfish only live in the deep sea (like I said) and they only really eat decaying whale carcasses and such and I probably wouldn’t be hanging out in the deep sea with dead whales…It’s just not my scene but if I were, it could trap me in its impenetrable mucus and then have its way with me.

Lets see…..

The sudden movements of insects…I mean it. It’s not the actual insect (spider, beetle, grasshopper) that frightens me. It’s the way they keep absolutely still until…they don’t. The worst is when you move closer and closer to what you think is a dark spot on your kitchen floor and then suddenly it sprouts wings and then flies AT YOUR FACE!

Last on my list, and perhaps the most terrifying of all…

Personal Incompetence

I have this recurring dream. I find myself on a lit stage staring out into a darkness which I know holds an expectant audience. It’s kind of like Christopher Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare but worse. It would be a relief to think that I was just put on the stage without any knowledge of the play or the part I’m supposed to portray and that’s what I think has happened at first. My initial reaction is defensive outrage, “How can you expect me to perform when I don’t even know the play!” Then, slowly, I have this vague remembrance of an audition, casting…rehearsals. I should know the play. I should know my lines! I’ve been to rehearsals. I’ve committed to this production and I’ve simply forgotten everything about it. My psychologist friend says this is a common anxiety dream like the showing up to school with no clothes on dream but this is different. I should know what I’m doing and I usually do but there’s no one else to blame and I’ve let you down.

No Watson

I adore Sherlock Holmes.  Despite his misogynistic view of women, his cocaine addiction and perhaps because of his determination to remain a bachelor, I would take him as a mama gorilla crushes a kitten to her breast. But I want to be Dr. Watson.  His efficiency of description astounds me.  At first glance, the good doctor can mark all the necessary revelations of a person’s countenance; the vices that lie in wait behind pendulous cheeks, the superficiality of benevolent jowls, the will to murder behind a coquettish mouth.  Without fail, a character’s viciously small, fat-encircled eyes and swarthy complexion would manifest the characteristics that must accompany all people of color: deceit, savagery and fanaticism.  (We must remember to place Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his imperial context.)  Putting that aside, however, I can’t help admire Holmes’ most ardent admirer.  He is the ultimate foil set beneath Sherlock, the gem of logical brilliance.  He is the straight man to Holmes’ eccentricities, the heart and flesh to the automaton, the sparknotes to the unabridged genius.  Without Watson, we would simply have a surly 1st-person narrator with no motivation to explain his actions (unless it was to illustrate the smallness or our own deductive reasoning).  No, Watson is indeed invaluable. 

            I only wish I had his grasp, his reductive powers of perception.  My own attempts falter….

My husband is a thickset bear-like fellow, but not a ferocious FOX network-special kind of bear but more of a Charmin bath tissue cartoonish bear that walks too slowly to catch smaller prey and is not intelligent enough to find a lake when swarmed by disturbed bees.  The curve of his ears betrays the sloth-like manner in which he does everything.  The calloused fingertips reveal his irritating habit of playing the ukulele during the afternoon siesta of a hard-working wife.  The softness of his underarms proclaims his secret ambition of eternal half-time student-hood.

Perhaps, this is not quite Watson-worthy.  I shall make another attempt upon the same subject….

The slight gap between his two front teeth make it impossible to imagine he would ever be a commanding father and is quite likely to tell any future child to “do what makes you happy” or some other such absurd thing white people tell their children.  The manner of his walk and carriage divulge his inherent discomfort of large groups and tendency to find every social interaction “awkward” due to some junior-high trauma.

No, this is nothing like the good doctor’s efficient diagnoses of characters.  Watson used his preternatural vision to see the latent dangers in an individual personality.  I’m doing something similar, I think, but quite the opposite at the same time.   I would like to efficiently summarize the features of the people around me and discover their veiled natures and synthesize them into neat files of friend and foe but I fail.  In my attempts to see my husband with Watsonian eyes, I find myself finding my fears in his features.  I read my anxiety about the future in his figure; see my irritants in his countenance, my insecurities in his extremities.  

Watson had it easy.  In his annals of adventure with the enigmatic detective, people abruptly arrived (with or without a card) at the Baker Street address and poured their distress into his friend’s lap.  Some quick detecting was done and  a few weeks later, they would be gone from his life.  He did marry one of the victims but we never hear from the lady again…

My dilemma lies in the interconnectedness of it all.  My life is intertwined with this subject, this bear-man.  I cannot reduce him, package him with words and then send him away.  Nor can I simply project my preoccupations onto him.  He is friend and foe, a whole person I cannot learn how to live with in any logical manner.

 I’ll make one last attempt ……

 

If eyes are open to the soul than his are no ordinary windows.  They’re the kind in the Flinstone House.  I mean the prehistoric windows through which the pet dinosaur would peek.  My husband’s eyes are like those square cut-outs.  They have no glass, no shudders or curtains.  They let in the elements and Barney Ruble.  That’s what makes them vulnerable and beautiful.    

James Ensor

 

He dressed his skeletons in garish top hats

 Suffered Christ’s humiliation as his own

Smeared his features on the holy visage

99 ½  by 169 inches

the second coming, a carnival, a farce

All the distorted faces melting into a sneer

grandstanders, infamous dead and kin

Puppets, masks and skeletons

 

And the Christ on his donkey obscured in the multitude