Difficult Questions are Not Always Cryptic

          I’m afraid I live a series of difficult questions. Challenging really. Predictably socially unpopular and possibly downright incriminating.

          It’s almost a year now that I’ve been fighting the good fight. Every skill in my repertoire has been employed. The eradication of not only my questions but all related thoughts and feelings has been attempted. I have to admit that these efforts have been made not only by me but sometimes at me by members of my family of origin.
          So. My blog has no recent entries. My movie script waits for its third draft to begin. My evocatively crafted fifty page article - the meat and heart of my book proposal - hides under a neatly folded pile of laundry on my bureau. ( This is no small feat. It took careful time and attention to match each corner of the fitted sheet perfectly.) My eight hundred and fifty page prose-poem memoir (perfect standard book length for this form) hides up on the shelf behind my lifelong collection of stuffed Eeyores. The memoir deconstructed and reconstructed in traditional prose form hangs, section by section, in a vertical, galvanized metal magazine rack. The entire body of work, re-crafted as a complete, mixed-genre theatrical performance with both musical and dance scores, nearly radiates in its special high gloss plastic envelope folder that fastens with a particularly nice string detail. The exquisite illustrations I commissioned for this work hang framed in my kitchen, their only adornment an occasional over-dusting of non-gluten flour from my pink KitchenAid mixer. The film documentation of the first performances, still unedited and without form, wait in their mailing envelope. The artist who performed my written words out in Washington state has yet to send me her words and images.
          As you can see, I’ve put the brakes on all projects. I’ve stopped anything that could force these difficult explorations out of me and into the public arena. I’ve tried overwork and under work. I’ve tried distraction, denial and food explorations. I’ve even tried dating. Never one for the easy road, I’ve also taken on new interests, learned new skills, engaged in conversation and begun a spiritual practice of sorts. I’ve built a small building, laid a complicated brick patio, stacked three cords of firewood.
          And through it all, the drumbeat of my questions has continued. They bang at my heart, moment by moment.
          So. I give up.
          Into the public arena I come, questions splayed.
          Because if my words simply refuse to go to nowhere then they have to be somewhere.

          Of course, you dear reader, cannot possibly know this but it’s been days since I wrote the above words. I simply got so frightened that I hid this draft on my desktop and under the deliberately closed cover of my computer.
          Well, now that I’ve completed my tax preparation, Face-Book-ed myself until there is no unknown detail about any of my virtual ‘friends’, cleaned and cared for my birds scrupulously, the only other possible avoidance I can reasonably employ would be shoveling the snow that truly is melting on its own in the rain.

          Here then, is a first stab at articulating some of the disputes railroad-ing through me.

          Ah, the enigma of the mind. What an extraordinary journey it is to be a person. Each time I get close to enunciating - never mind writing - and then God forbid posting, I find another important diversion. For example, because words matter to me - so much - I want to choose each one with care. When it came time to use the word ‘questions’ again, the Language Arts teacher I carry in my head from childhood wagged her finger. So back to my favorite book - the Thesaurus - I go. There’s a lot to say about the word ‘questions’. Many different ways to look at it. The antonym appears to be (in a nutshell): denial. This is good. Engaging with denial has been a driving force in my life and a true source of angst which informs my work.

          And thankfully, this brings me full circle to the questions at hand.


#1           There. I’ve labeled it (this yet to be written) number one. A musing of sorts. With hopes that my words will turn out to be a catalyst for engagement and conversation. So. Again:

#1           Is it ever deeply true that people ‘can’t’ grow in their consciousness and communication? Or is it, as I believe, always a choice? Perhaps a choice that is not readily accessible. Perhaps a choice that feels (or is believed to be) difficult, uncomfortable or downright formidable, but still - when all is said and done - a choice.

#2.          Here we have the bathroom break moment. Now. I’m ready to try again.

#2.           If the life story of a writer/artist dictates a palate (the raw inner truth-material from which to draw) that includes three (yes 3!) violent rapes, and it feels inexorably important to put the work into the world - to craft something beautiful and useful and important - is it possible to do this in a manner that pushes through all the (unwarranted) shame, familial / cultural denial, and incredible fear, and make the work magnificent?


#3.          If, out of incredible trauma, the writer (me) has spent her life both living a vicious form of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) as well as treating people with PTSD for twenty four years, and if, during this time, she (Yup. Me.) has come to understand that the environment into which one is received after trauma is the single most important factor in determining the formation, duration and severity of said PTSD, and if the writer is willing to write her own life story as a gift for others, and finally, if doing so will potentially hurt the feelings of her family of origin (particularly her mother) and also could possibly facilitate a moving through of the systemic, multi-generational denial that has ruled the family, should she deny her own integrity and not do it? Or should she (as I vehemently believe) do the work that her (my) moral compass dictates?

          Okay. I’m getting there now. A couple more statements of questions and maybe this heart-pounding, palm-sweating, PTSD enhanced fear will subside.

#4.          If the relatively easy screenplay to write is one where the main character is violently raped three times and then sets out to prove that “There’s No Such Thing As A Wrecked Life” but the true story is that the main character - by being born into, witnessing and being profoundly wounded by her mother’s denial - sets out (from childhood on) to prove that how humans experience and make meaning of their lives is a CHOICE, and from this, she embarks on a quest to prove that any life can be magnificently lived, and in the process she is violently raped on three very different occasions, and she continues on to prove that people can choose not to be ‘haters’, can choose to live examined and conscious lives, can choose to live in love and sometimes joy (though these choices are difficult), should she (as I now believe) write the more difficult / more true / more beautiful / much less ‘black and white’ / teeming with fallibility and humanness script? Or not?

          Whew. It’s an incredible challenge to get these non-linear questions into linear form.

#5.           Is it true - as our culture and many families exact - that when a person has tried with everything inside her, to communicate her truth (yup. this is me), and she has been systematically denied by her mother, that caring for this mother through the last stage of her life and on to death, is the morally right thing to do?

#6.           Do we, through our trying, earn our relationships and everything that follows (and if we don’t try, then reap whatever this non-trying sows) or do we get to choose denial and unconsciousness through our life and then as we age, expect / demand / extoll the care we think we deserve anyway?

#7.           And in my fear I have to add this number seven. Is it possible - while sounding callus and downright selfish and unwilling - that one’s own integrity dictates what we want and are willing to do?

          Which leads me to number eight.

#8.           Why do we enfranchise the entitlement and dishonesty of the: “I can’t do it.” with a response of understanding?

          And contrariwise, why do we disenfranchise the honesty of the: “I will not do this because I believe it is wrong.” with a response of rage?

          Even if the “I can’t do it” is a convenient lie and the “I don’t want to do this” is a truth ripped right from the guts of a wound - whether an acknowledged wound or not (Here’s a chapter title from my as yet unpublished book: 'A Boo-Boo Is Still A Boo-Boo') - , somehow the articulation of a desire or the lack thereof seems to elicit a battalion of responses while the disowning of desire elicits an overt complicity.

          So now I’ve done it. Put the morass into words.


cryp⋅tic  [krip-tik]

–adjective Also, cryp⋅ti⋅cal.
1. mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous: a cryptic message.
2. abrupt; terse; short: a cryptic note.
3. secret; occult: a cryptic writing.
4. involving or using cipher, code, etc.
5. Zoology. fitted for concealing; serving to camouflage

e⋅rad⋅i⋅cate  [i-rad-i-keyt]
–verb (used with object), -cat⋅ed, -cat⋅ing.
1. to remove or destroy utterly; extirpate: to eradicate smallpox throughout the world.
2. to erase by rubbing or by means of a chemical solvent: to eradicate a spot.
3. to pull up by the roots: to eradicate weeds.
Synonyms:

1. obliterate, uproot, exterminate, annihilate.

Integrity: noun

1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
2. the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.
3. a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of a ship's hull.