Today is Thursday. The weather started out very nice today, in the mid 60s. I did not wear a coat to work. Despite the nice weather, I took the subway, I was 60 pages away from finishing Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom, and, since I planned to finish last night, I wanted to get as much done as possible. Work has been calm lately and not too busy, but I didn't want to take any chances. One never knows when the phone call will come and I will lose my free time. Today, I did not do much work. I ate lunch out, Blue Fin, and went to the gym to see Emilie from 2-3. Then I called Samar to arrange the itinerary for South Africa. By about 5, I had only billed 3.75 hours. I did get another assignment today, but nothing that is going to be time sensitive, so I left around 7:15 and took the subway home -- again, more time for reading. With a slight detour on the subway and the broken elevator, it took almost an hour to get home. At home, I finished Mandela's autobiography.
It was an interesting read. Sorry, that's a bit of an understatement and the dry tone in my head doesn't really translate. Mandela is a good, clear writer, but not creative or inventive. One can see the methodical planning that made him such an effective political leader and innovator, but as the author of a 625 page book, his style is a little stiff. The first half of the book is about his upbringing and path into politics. The problem I was having was that there was no way to tell from his formative years how or why he stood apart. Indeed, I would say that as a literary figure, he does not become a leader until after he has been imprisoned for several years, past when he was considered a leader by members of his organization and constituency. Almost as if he needed to be a leader in the eyes of others before he considered himself to be one or truly acted as one. Maybe it is the reality that one cannot lead until after there are people who will follow that lead. I am interested in how he became such a leader in the eyes of the people. What is it about someone that turns them from an ordinary person to a freedom fighter or revolutionary to a true leader, born up by the masses. To compare him to a politician in America is an interesting enterprise, since he did not have any of the modern American political machinery to announce his name and his politics. In addition, he was imprisoned for so long, yet again, from literary interpretation, his stature only seemed to grow. It was in prison that he distinguished himself from the other revolutionary leaders who were his compatriots.
I was also comparing the regime of South Africa to those in South America. The ANC and other groups in South Africa had certain advantages which made their form of protest -- the slow-downs, the rallies -- successful and possible, and ironically, the advantages stemmed from the control exercised by the colonial rulers and the legacy of British Imperialism. Mandela could, at times, invoke certain rules of law, and demand that the protesters were treated fairly under the laws. Whatever the laws at the time were (except the very last years where it seems the government learned that if they wanted to get serious about suppressing the people, they could not be hampered by the rule of law), the government would obey them. In contrast, in the South American dictatorships, headed not by imperial forces, there was no rule of law. People simply disappeared. The revolutionaries could not appeal to the court system for justice because the government did not have laws that even nominally protected dissenting voices. Those governments were brutal and paid no lip service to protecting the rights of those who disagreed with them. One thing Mandela said over and over again was the oppressing party dictated the terms of the struggle. Those who were challenging the government's policies had to respond in the manner in which they were treated. In India, the government allowed protest and dissent, which in turn meant that Ghandi could demonstrate by walking though the country and preaching nonviolence as a means of rejecting colonial rule. Similarly, MLK Jr. could practice the same non-violence because in America, his right to protest freely was recognized, if not always accepted. In contrast, in South America, a protester could not more begin to speak against the government before being shot, imprisoned or tortured, with no chance of appealing to a higher power for protection. Maybe that is why there were more rebels in countries trying to overturn the dictatorships than there were revolutionaries in the Western understanding of the term. Of course, I am showing my ignorance in not remembering which countries had dictatorships where people were disappeared.
At the end of the book, when the power was really going to shift and Mandela, in his 80s, was elected president, I actually became more agitated. At what price was his freedom, and what would the people who fought so hard, who died, paying the ultimate price, think? Those who died, would they think their sacrifices worth while, especially because in the end it was through peaceful negotiation and compromise. With the transition away from apartheid being so moderate and their sacrifice being so extreme. Maybe it was the disconnect that struck me so forcefully. Their deaths were unnecessary, clearly, but the fact that their deaths did not lead to unilateral victory that I guess makes it hard for me to reconcile. Or maybe the fact that Mandela himself never talks about being tortured or injured in the struggle. Throughout he remains the great statesmen who is untouched by the violence. Those who were tortured, hanged, beaten, or shot, by contrast seem like a corollary, unrelated to the final pressures that forced the government's position to the negotiation table. I know that this was not the message that I was supposed to receive, and that Mandela, if he read this, would strenuously disagree with what I took away.
A long lead up to my personal experience with death and probably what caused my internal struggle at the end of the book. Brian's death for me was very personal. He was mine. He didn't belong to a group, not in the sense of membership, but in the sense of ownership. Mandela spends parts of the book discussing how a freedom fighter cannot also really be a family man. He has chosen as his family the people that he represents. Mandela struggles with this, wondering if his choices were based on selfishness in that he put the struggle to end apartheid above the needs of his family to have a father and a more stable life. Brian never made that kind of decision and would never make that decision. He was a person of the world, but the natural world rather than the civilized world. He was not motivated by politics or interpersonal interactions, but with interactions between man and the natural world. Unlike many of the enlightenment philosophers, Brian would not agree that politics was necessary for the development of humankind or that civilization was a necessary engine for personal development. The connection that his teacher made at his funeral with Emerson was very appropriate. Maybe she grasped instinctively what I have been struggling to say for the past ten minutes. Democratic government, going back to the ancient Greeks is based on the principle that not only must the government be based on popular opinion, but that such a form of government is vital to the growth and development of the human spirit. We are not humans unless we are participating in decisions that create the structure under which we exist. I think Brain, if pushed, would ultimately think that civilization, instead of revealing our true identities, stifled our natural creativity. That it made us lie to ourselves and to others about what we really wanted and about what made us happy. In fact, that as long as we ascribed to the rules of society, we could not be happy. Discourse, instead of leading to enlightenment, caused confusion and distortion of what was really important. All this made him all the more mine (and Amy's and Susan's and Jim's).
All this is to say is that the public nature of the deaths of those who fought apartheid in South Africa brought home how personal Brian's death was for me, and how now, over two years later, I still am struggling to find some peace with it. Did Mandela have this same struggle. He lost two of his children, one close after his birth, the other to a car accident when he was in his 20s. Did those deaths completely change his world view? Neither were connected to the apartheid regime, did the fact that death could happen randomly shape his personal philosophy? I have always fought the idea when people ask me if I am okay, if I have my closure, if I am over it. But in a sense, I know I need something. Or maybe I just want something, an ability to say, okay, Brian is dead, but I have made my peace with it. I want to be able to have a normal relationship without constantly thinking of him. I am obsessed with his approval. Would he be proud of me, would Brain think this is a valuable use of my time. What would he think to know that I spend my evening reading a book and then writing on a blog that no one read? Some evenings he didn't mind doing things like this. A lot of our evenings were very quite -- we often bored ourselves. But in death, I let the idea of him judge all of my actions. Brian would be taking advantage of living in this city. Brian wouldn't be doing a job that he didn't love; Brian wouldn't wait to decorate his apartment and would keep it clean. Would Brian, in his death, think that I was making the most of the fact that I had been given life? On these matters, I want to both break Brian's hold of me and to please him. Fundamentally, I think we differed on our world views. For all that he was an extrovert, he both defined himself and was defined by nature -- an individual in the broadest sense of the world, formed by his interactions with himself and his own soul, for lack of a better description. When I try to think of a way to explain this, all I can think of is Brian, on the top of a mountain, valleys, forests, and rolling hills to one side, shrouded in fog, and maybe on the other cliffs and the ocean -- much like the hike we took in the week after we died in Carmel -- with his hands thrown up over his head, taking in the vastness of sky. He defined himself in relation to the indefiniteness of nature, mountains, sky, the ocean. Human existence, in relation to all of this would just be a blink, destroyed as quickly as it was created. For all that I am an introvert, I am a creature of society and am formed my interactions with others, my history is not the billion year old creation of Earth, but the much shorter history of man and his struggle to find a way to life with other men, to communicate and to form structures within which interactions are possible. To see those interactions become more and more complicated, to see man become more complicated in turn.
I started this post so I could explore my recent feelings about Brain, but it didn't turn out that way. Probably because I don't have the words to describe the changes he and his death have caused in me and what I am feeling right now, other than confused and uncomfortable; recognizing that it has been too long for me to still be at such a stage of emotional and personal turmoil, that is not "healthy" -- ahh, that word I hate -- and that I don't seem to be "progressing" or "healing" but instead seem to be irrevocably caught in this net of uncertainly and insecurity and bad alliteration. Anyway, I have been at this an hour and a half. Its probably time to stop.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
to you, totally unrestrained
Here we are, writing as the words move like worms across the page, coming in and out ans thicker and thinner. the altered world of the drug that makes me so sad right now. sad because my vision is blurred because my head isn't stable. the ambien mixes with the sad period mess and produc-es a new world like out of a rahl dalh book, something where threes are people and can dance and come together in their own way to create a great children's program where the kids are taught that the wordd is interesting and worth of living for.
so alex started this all because we were trying to remember who katherine was. she had been in ny and i had dinner with her and chris, her boyfriend who broke his neck and the same part that Brian died. in his many surgeries, his esophagus was ruptured and now he has an intravenous feeding tube. after dinner, i went to a party at alex's and i was trying to remind alex who she was, because when everyone came to ca for the funeral, she had been one and she had stayed with alex's parents and cooked dinner one night. and alex said that was that other girl that kept saying that her and brian were in love. alex was like yeah right, you have only been seeing each other for a month. i had forgotten about her, Rebecca., when telling the story that my boyfriend was killed. but he wasn't really mine. he wouldn't have considered himself mine. and i have drams where i force him to choose between the two. a few night ago he choose me. he just wanted to see me. its like we were at UVa, but really it was like a summer camp (all safe places where i was at peace) and he said what we had was real, and that what he had after wasn't real and didn't count at all. i wish i believed that these were Brian coming down and telling me the truth, what his preferences would have been. i had been so mad at time, for making me feel the way i feel about him, knowing how i feel about him, then treating me and my feelings in a caviler attitude. then he comes and give me this great dream. but what does it mean, and does it cancel out the other dreams i have where he chooses to not be with me so he can do other things. i am so mad at myself for allowing this jerk of a boy to control so many of my emotions. I loved him. I never loved anyone before, and the way this is going, i will never love anyone afterward. i want to feel that spark and for the other person to feel the spark and for us to make it work without the drama and games of modern dating in New York. but i don't know if i can, because right now, i can't see beyond this drama that a two-year-dead boy is wreaking on my life. you left me behind, confused, insecure. if you didn't love me, who will.
this is what the inside of my head feels like. an evil tumble house, exaggerations and creatures and textures all collected. none of it makes any sense. i don't think i can have a normal relationship again because first, so much of its bullshit, second, i don't like who i am, how can someone like me while i am looking at them, certain that they can do better. for this i am so mad at you brian -- why didn't you love me? why couldn't you have left me with that. i remember spooning in bed, i never used to have problems sleeping when you were in the room. when i could just be me relaxed before i got to be too lazy. you like me then, when i was willing to go along and try anything. but with you i didn't really try anything, its almost like neither of use wanted me to. you wanted to have your own things, and i was content because it was enough for me that you were doing it. I want that dream to be you choosing me or at least choosing to love me. Two nights ago you came back from the dead for me and it was just what i wanted, why didn't that help? why did it just make me look at my life and wonder. why do i go home when i could be going out exploring NYC. when we were here together, all we did was sleep in and wander the shopping districts. i think we saw the met, we ate cheap food, went to the mediocre play. we wasted that vacation too, unless you count the great sex on the couch that came after the deep conversation. i got a little carried away and you stopped to make sure i was okay. what did you really think of me? you made me so happy for so long, and then you made me feel like i was holding you back because i wasn't as adventurous as you were and because i loved you more than you loved me so you were choosing between me and doing cool things that you though you had to do at your age. so we broke up. you quoted ben folds "there once was an old man who lived to his 90s, then one day passed away in his sleep" then you said "see you soon" and we were broken up so we could figure things out and get back together. maybe. or maybe just continue to drift apart. i continued to hate law school, but that first summer we were apart wasn't so bad, the work was interesting, it was a quite summer, not many of my friends were in Nashville, but the work was good and the summer class, such as it was, was fun. then you came back and got the stuff you had been storing at my place. and we had sex, because i couldn't help it, you were so tanned and your shoulders were so broad from the summer of surfing and kayaking. i made you sleep on the couch, the bed wasn't an option. but i got up early and wanted to be able to see you and be close to you, so i got my books and started reading on the chair. you saw me when you woke up and opened up your arms as said: "cuddle?" and i almost started crying right then. it was so comfortable being back in your arms, i couldn't stop touching you and i though you were having the same problem. i guess i kissed your chest and off we went. afterwards you ruined it by saying you had to stop giving me your sperm. of all the jerky things to say. then you said it was my fault because i started kissing your chest. i didn't want to get back together, but it was so nice to fall into each other again, and i was sad and hurt that you would put it like that. then you went back to uva, and had the time of your life as far as i can tell. talking to you that semester, it didn't feel like you. you broke your arm and i offered to come help you unpack. i think you were grateful at the time and i was so worried about cramping your style, but i couldn't tell what you wanted from me. i slept on the floor, drove you around, helped you buy and decorate your apartment, but i was never good enough. when i did you laundry, i lost one of your shirts and you later found it discolored in the heap. i couldn't cut the matting boards straight for the photos. i went out to get you medicine late at night when you had an allergenic reaction, and i kept trying to remind myself it wasn't about me, it was about you, but you didn't seem to appreciate me, you gave me a hard time when i couldn't carry the boxes by myself. i know you were in pain and were frustrated that you couldn't do what you wanted to do and were bummed that you would have a steal rod in your arm for life. but i was so sad the final night. i had cleared my schedule for a full week if you needed me to stay, and hinted as much to you. but either i was being too subtle or you wanted me to go. and that hurt, i was crying the last night but didn't want you to know. when i got back to nashville, you had sent me that cute card as a thanks. and then a few weeks later you asked if lizzie was going to come back from italy looking as hot as she did when she got back from france and didn't understand why i was upset. why couldn't you just admit that it was insensitive, instead of apologizing because it had upset me. i decided that you weren't worth it any more, that i didn't need you in my life. and for three weeks, i didn't talk to you. apparently at this time, you were busy being the big man on campus, getting lots of ladies and attention, drinking, something you refused to do with me unless it was a bottle of wine with dinner. i am glad that you got to do all the stuff that you couldn't do when you were with me, i just wish we could have done some of that together or that i didn't feel like i was holding you back so much. i had an inculing that you were finding your place at the time, but after you died, when i looked back at pictures, and really saw you coming out of your shell, it hurt so much more to know that you were greater, bigger, better than i was, and that i would always be playing catch up. i started to wonder if you really loved me or just told yourself that you did. if, by the time of your death, you had come to the same conclusion that you came to with Suzanne, that you didn't really love me, you just thought you did. And then you left me that message on new years eve. and i knew you were thinking of me then. i was still not talking to you because i was done. but hearing your voice, hey ... its me ... im in san francisco. you didn't know what to say but you wanted to be in connection with me. like when i would get mad at you, i would wouldn't be ready to move on, but still i had to be in the same room as you. then my love for you just all came flooding back and i started wondering, seriously for the first time, if we could give it another go. but of course, by then it was probably too late. We talked a week later and i had to tell you i still loved you. but the way i did it was totally face saving, i said this is not to put any pressure on you, i just want you to know that i still love you. i wish i listened better to what you said next. it was something like of course you do. we were together for a long time, that doesn't just go away. then i said when will it. but i don't remember what you said. what i was too scared to say was that i don't want it to. i like loving you. then we went on to talk about other things. how happy you were in your place right now, how scared you were for change. i said that for some college is just a passage way, so the things that they do and the friends that they make are transient. but i told you that you were not like that, you would continue to make the same kinds of friends and the same lifestyle choices so that there won't be a huge disconnect between who you are now and who you will be after college. then you told me about rebecca, but i didn't know her name then. you said that there was something and you didn't know where it was going. i tried to joke it off and show you that i was okay with it by saying, so you hooked up with someone and now you don't know what to do about it. I think you let my definition stand, not because it was right or wrong, but because though you though i should know, you didn't really want to talk to me about it, especially if you really liked her. I heard you made secret valentines day plans. they better have been original from the ones you used on me! i am sorry i didn't celebrate occasions as much as you did. and then you died. and here i am over two years later. unhappy with my choices in life. lost, cast adrift. i don't have a purpose or direction or a hope that i can find one. i want to go back to san diego, when we thought we could do anything and that we would be happy and satisfied in that. i want to go back to when i would get stressed because i cared and you could always calm me down. How can i do that? i have a mortgage. i can't just leave the firm, and if i did, what would i do? so maybe you could come to me again tonight. i could use some cheering up.
so alex started this all because we were trying to remember who katherine was. she had been in ny and i had dinner with her and chris, her boyfriend who broke his neck and the same part that Brian died. in his many surgeries, his esophagus was ruptured and now he has an intravenous feeding tube. after dinner, i went to a party at alex's and i was trying to remind alex who she was, because when everyone came to ca for the funeral, she had been one and she had stayed with alex's parents and cooked dinner one night. and alex said that was that other girl that kept saying that her and brian were in love. alex was like yeah right, you have only been seeing each other for a month. i had forgotten about her, Rebecca., when telling the story that my boyfriend was killed. but he wasn't really mine. he wouldn't have considered himself mine. and i have drams where i force him to choose between the two. a few night ago he choose me. he just wanted to see me. its like we were at UVa, but really it was like a summer camp (all safe places where i was at peace) and he said what we had was real, and that what he had after wasn't real and didn't count at all. i wish i believed that these were Brian coming down and telling me the truth, what his preferences would have been. i had been so mad at time, for making me feel the way i feel about him, knowing how i feel about him, then treating me and my feelings in a caviler attitude. then he comes and give me this great dream. but what does it mean, and does it cancel out the other dreams i have where he chooses to not be with me so he can do other things. i am so mad at myself for allowing this jerk of a boy to control so many of my emotions. I loved him. I never loved anyone before, and the way this is going, i will never love anyone afterward. i want to feel that spark and for the other person to feel the spark and for us to make it work without the drama and games of modern dating in New York. but i don't know if i can, because right now, i can't see beyond this drama that a two-year-dead boy is wreaking on my life. you left me behind, confused, insecure. if you didn't love me, who will.
this is what the inside of my head feels like. an evil tumble house, exaggerations and creatures and textures all collected. none of it makes any sense. i don't think i can have a normal relationship again because first, so much of its bullshit, second, i don't like who i am, how can someone like me while i am looking at them, certain that they can do better. for this i am so mad at you brian -- why didn't you love me? why couldn't you have left me with that. i remember spooning in bed, i never used to have problems sleeping when you were in the room. when i could just be me relaxed before i got to be too lazy. you like me then, when i was willing to go along and try anything. but with you i didn't really try anything, its almost like neither of use wanted me to. you wanted to have your own things, and i was content because it was enough for me that you were doing it. I want that dream to be you choosing me or at least choosing to love me. Two nights ago you came back from the dead for me and it was just what i wanted, why didn't that help? why did it just make me look at my life and wonder. why do i go home when i could be going out exploring NYC. when we were here together, all we did was sleep in and wander the shopping districts. i think we saw the met, we ate cheap food, went to the mediocre play. we wasted that vacation too, unless you count the great sex on the couch that came after the deep conversation. i got a little carried away and you stopped to make sure i was okay. what did you really think of me? you made me so happy for so long, and then you made me feel like i was holding you back because i wasn't as adventurous as you were and because i loved you more than you loved me so you were choosing between me and doing cool things that you though you had to do at your age. so we broke up. you quoted ben folds "there once was an old man who lived to his 90s, then one day passed away in his sleep" then you said "see you soon" and we were broken up so we could figure things out and get back together. maybe. or maybe just continue to drift apart. i continued to hate law school, but that first summer we were apart wasn't so bad, the work was interesting, it was a quite summer, not many of my friends were in Nashville, but the work was good and the summer class, such as it was, was fun. then you came back and got the stuff you had been storing at my place. and we had sex, because i couldn't help it, you were so tanned and your shoulders were so broad from the summer of surfing and kayaking. i made you sleep on the couch, the bed wasn't an option. but i got up early and wanted to be able to see you and be close to you, so i got my books and started reading on the chair. you saw me when you woke up and opened up your arms as said: "cuddle?" and i almost started crying right then. it was so comfortable being back in your arms, i couldn't stop touching you and i though you were having the same problem. i guess i kissed your chest and off we went. afterwards you ruined it by saying you had to stop giving me your sperm. of all the jerky things to say. then you said it was my fault because i started kissing your chest. i didn't want to get back together, but it was so nice to fall into each other again, and i was sad and hurt that you would put it like that. then you went back to uva, and had the time of your life as far as i can tell. talking to you that semester, it didn't feel like you. you broke your arm and i offered to come help you unpack. i think you were grateful at the time and i was so worried about cramping your style, but i couldn't tell what you wanted from me. i slept on the floor, drove you around, helped you buy and decorate your apartment, but i was never good enough. when i did you laundry, i lost one of your shirts and you later found it discolored in the heap. i couldn't cut the matting boards straight for the photos. i went out to get you medicine late at night when you had an allergenic reaction, and i kept trying to remind myself it wasn't about me, it was about you, but you didn't seem to appreciate me, you gave me a hard time when i couldn't carry the boxes by myself. i know you were in pain and were frustrated that you couldn't do what you wanted to do and were bummed that you would have a steal rod in your arm for life. but i was so sad the final night. i had cleared my schedule for a full week if you needed me to stay, and hinted as much to you. but either i was being too subtle or you wanted me to go. and that hurt, i was crying the last night but didn't want you to know. when i got back to nashville, you had sent me that cute card as a thanks. and then a few weeks later you asked if lizzie was going to come back from italy looking as hot as she did when she got back from france and didn't understand why i was upset. why couldn't you just admit that it was insensitive, instead of apologizing because it had upset me. i decided that you weren't worth it any more, that i didn't need you in my life. and for three weeks, i didn't talk to you. apparently at this time, you were busy being the big man on campus, getting lots of ladies and attention, drinking, something you refused to do with me unless it was a bottle of wine with dinner. i am glad that you got to do all the stuff that you couldn't do when you were with me, i just wish we could have done some of that together or that i didn't feel like i was holding you back so much. i had an inculing that you were finding your place at the time, but after you died, when i looked back at pictures, and really saw you coming out of your shell, it hurt so much more to know that you were greater, bigger, better than i was, and that i would always be playing catch up. i started to wonder if you really loved me or just told yourself that you did. if, by the time of your death, you had come to the same conclusion that you came to with Suzanne, that you didn't really love me, you just thought you did. And then you left me that message on new years eve. and i knew you were thinking of me then. i was still not talking to you because i was done. but hearing your voice, hey ... its me ... im in san francisco. you didn't know what to say but you wanted to be in connection with me. like when i would get mad at you, i would wouldn't be ready to move on, but still i had to be in the same room as you. then my love for you just all came flooding back and i started wondering, seriously for the first time, if we could give it another go. but of course, by then it was probably too late. We talked a week later and i had to tell you i still loved you. but the way i did it was totally face saving, i said this is not to put any pressure on you, i just want you to know that i still love you. i wish i listened better to what you said next. it was something like of course you do. we were together for a long time, that doesn't just go away. then i said when will it. but i don't remember what you said. what i was too scared to say was that i don't want it to. i like loving you. then we went on to talk about other things. how happy you were in your place right now, how scared you were for change. i said that for some college is just a passage way, so the things that they do and the friends that they make are transient. but i told you that you were not like that, you would continue to make the same kinds of friends and the same lifestyle choices so that there won't be a huge disconnect between who you are now and who you will be after college. then you told me about rebecca, but i didn't know her name then. you said that there was something and you didn't know where it was going. i tried to joke it off and show you that i was okay with it by saying, so you hooked up with someone and now you don't know what to do about it. I think you let my definition stand, not because it was right or wrong, but because though you though i should know, you didn't really want to talk to me about it, especially if you really liked her. I heard you made secret valentines day plans. they better have been original from the ones you used on me! i am sorry i didn't celebrate occasions as much as you did. and then you died. and here i am over two years later. unhappy with my choices in life. lost, cast adrift. i don't have a purpose or direction or a hope that i can find one. i want to go back to san diego, when we thought we could do anything and that we would be happy and satisfied in that. i want to go back to when i would get stressed because i cared and you could always calm me down. How can i do that? i have a mortgage. i can't just leave the firm, and if i did, what would i do? so maybe you could come to me again tonight. i could use some cheering up.
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