Empowerment
The work requires a continuous dialogue with various sides of self. There has to be a way to keep an eye on myself.
Today, we’re digging into the crates of Open Thought’s fourth volume, A Closer Look at Nothing.
A doctor tests my lungs, listens to my heart, checks for how my knees bend. Everything appears in working order except all the chronic stuff—we will draw blood and get back to you. We can always break bad news over email. Be on the lookout.
Vibe on some documentary and try not to overeat. Get blood flowing in some significant way. Some writing is cooking up. Later, I'll see if I can meditate. There is this coffee pain since there was some coffee today. A small amount going in, tasting golden. Soon my body wants to cry. At first, I tried my hand at these notes while sitting up in bed. The best alternative is the table in the corner, here in my bedroom. Is there a bucket list in your possession? It’s better to write thoughts as they come and trust in the process. The bucket list will only contribute to depression.
Connecticut Avenue was filled most of the afternoon with the Free Palestine march, the largest Palestine solidarity protest in U.S. history. I'm pro-Gaza, myself. Why am I here at the notepad? There has to be a way to keep an eye on myself. When I see myself dip in and out of spirituality, or change things on the page, it’s a way to see a lot is going on inside, and I can’t always easily make sense of it—unless I take it for a test spin.
I’m morning-situated as I’m awake and present for the writing session. My fingers will do the walking and talking. Tables are swiveled around at a 45º angle, the little angels. Would wooden chairs extend a service? The early moments of a session do not always foretell what’s to come for the day. Sneezing along all of a sudden. Anything missing? Stop drinking all of that soda pulling you into its embrace. I have dreams where a tooth is loose and comes slipping out. Reinsert glasses to face to see if the writing session can be seen any clearer. Just a tad. Who is Tad? Who said Tad had to be personified? Who said I was asking that? Is this an argument brewing out of thin air, out of nothing? This is how I hear it in my head sometimes. Shrapnel from childhood—how you and your mother used to trigger each other, a cycle not broken for years to come. You need therapy and extra oxygen to the brain. Thanks.
The work requires a continuous dialogue with various sides of self. With Mom, it wasn’t like that. As soon as an argument would flare up, she’d storm off and slam the door. There must have been a lot of this in her childhood, too. It was hard to imagine a normal, functioning mother-son relationship; I knew early on this wasn’t it.
That’s where the heart breaks.
There’s so much frustration.
Get me to a point and I break something.
We’re looking to this day for the page-therapy. Otherwise, I could look up and observe all that’s not/happening in the cafe, lack of sunshine, etc. Page-therapy just might be to stick with it. So what is it? It’s to remain cognizant of the fact that there’s an internal dialogue happening, that at times the dialogue morphs into play-argumentation which mimics the toxic mother-son dynamic, a resultant meltdown, tumbling down into destructive states of inner torment.
I was watching Fire Walk With Me and thought, “This has to be upsetting for so many women who’ve suffered sexual abuse at an early age…” A story now that would warrant a disclaimer: “If you or someone you know…” Where was your torment? You mean, where was I? Where did you go when you were hurting? When you’re a little boy, your room is homebase. It’s also where you’re sent when you’re being punished. It’s banishment. Homebase becomes home jail.
So you went to your room? Yeah, I’d go to my room and slam the door, where the lesson was not learned. Why is that? There wasn’t a healthy dialogue. Mother herself never assumed the role of the adult. She never got there herself. That is the big underlying trouble of my early life. It only comes out now in my nightmares. In my days… Yes but, try to describe that anguish you experienced when you weren’t learning the lesson, when you were banished to your room. Oh yeah, well, thinking of it now, I guess it’s equivalent to how they say these days—feeling unseen, unheard. What did this do for you? It forced me to search for every possible way to express myself. For me, this meant expressing myself through language.
Can you go back to what it was like to be in that hell, internally? I think the anguish was so in-the-red at times I could hardly stand it. Everything was fire. If you were to let me go in the streets like this, there would be problems. So staying inside, it was like my body was trembling with rage. It was an inner world I wasn’t comfortable being in. I felt without home. It frightened me. It made me resentful that my mother was making me feel this way and wasn’t doing anything to help me. In this trapped place, I saw lots of shapes and patterns, and at times stories formed from them, stories I would create like deep sea divers swimming through caverns, going on adventures... It was sort of like how little boys play with army men. I was doing this in my head. Lots of visions. But I didn’t think of it then: “This is something I need to harness and develop.” These days, I see my inner world as a positive, a true homebase. I think of it like, “Yeah, I’m very visual. I’m a person who has visions… This is empowering to me. I’m curious. I embrace it. Where does this lead?” Despite all the heartbreak, I’m open.
One reason why, I think, we’re encouraged to write letters to our younger, previous selves, as a thought experiment, is to enter a space where we’re open and facing the difference between our lives then and now, to understand and appreciate how far we’ve come. That younger version of myself sought empowerment. He couldn’t imagine what it would look and feel like one day, but with age, he understood it was a trajectory.
Is this what it means to become
an adult for some people?
Maybe. I think it’s that you get a broader view, you get some clarity, you’ve taken on more responsibility, for yourself and others, and knowledge and experience starts to convert to wisdom. It’s hard to reach a semblance of this perspective when you don’t feel encouraged or supported by your family.
How’s the meditation going? Up and down. It might suffer a little from getting high in the evening. Then again, getting high so often takes me to a place where big ideas fire up. And it eases some of the physical pain. There is a cycle I find myself in that sometimes feels monotonous. I sense it when I get up in the morning and go through the routine of what it is to get ready. I almost always look forward to the writing session because I see it as a blank canvas, one that’s chronicled. What I should be doing is slowing down and making more time for meditation before heading out.
Empowerment as a young man, as I was then, partially meant getting out from under the family smothering and oppression and carve my way in the world. Others got to see who my family projected themselves to be. I got to see the entire picture. Maybe only now I’m starting to see...
The hard exterior shell we wear is there for a reason. It’s up to us to decide when to chill with that. Rough edges, whatever. Arguments, whatever. Stay. Stay. Let’s take a closer look.
The stagecoaches morph into pumpkins.
“I’m about to turn into a pumpkin,”
says a potential princess.
Do you respect yourself?
Dimmed lights at night.
Train your fingers as lightning
striking the keys.
Quick with the pen. Quick wit. Quick with it. Make sure to charge all of your devices. We’re all deviced-up. And how. Trustworthy. In tow, high as peaches are plump. I wonder if I can trust what comes up. Downstairs, I smashed my knee into a table, and there was blood. I’m the child who stops crying.
In a dream, a slice of pizza is moving up the wall carried by powerful forces that have entered the insect. Be proud of yourself for no reason. No one’s better at being me than me. I’m the best version of myself. Hang a bit and watch these cats sleep.
Direful thoughts on mortality, not knowing all that I feel in the deepest depth of reality. Only inclinations. One thought can be that these are my last ten years of life in this body. It’s just a feeling. It’s not something I necessarily want to manifest, but the thought keeps bobbing to the surface.
A deer park where a body is found in another documentary, in the suburbs of Baltimore. A brutal stabbing. Why not Baltimore?
Deep into the wooded brush.
Film discourse.
A study of
clues and motive.