What Lies Beyond, Part Thirteen
An Eternity Between
Joan Ann Lansberry
September 16, 1998
Moments apart,
Yet an eternity between:
What a pocket is time.September 17, 1998
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To let work become a meditation, each measured task in time, followed by the next, without hurry, yet progressing evenly to completion - this will train my mind. To remember the roots of strength, and not be distracted, this will train my mind.
JAL, 9-17-98
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September 18, 1998
6:24pm . . .
Glen and Mother went into Phoenix early today for the rest of his tests. I wish she would call and tell us what's been happening. Laura thinks they've taken the tests and put Glen in the hospital for the surgery. I wish she'd call . . .
Laura has the dark green phone sitting between us. I got so close to it, my nose touched it, and implored:
''R - I - N - G ! ! ! !''
September 19, 1998
Glen and Mother arrived last night about 9:30pm. They were exhausted and didn't talk much, so we didn't learn anything. Laura was able to talk to her Mother this morning. The three tests which should have taken three hours, took seven. One was a bone marrow test. In another, the bronchioscope, they are supposed to get five swipes out of the lung, but because Glen's lungs are so inflamed from smoking, they could only get one swipe. They didn't know if it contained what they're looking for, but had to give up trying because he couldn't breathe. The doctor said Glen almost died during the attempts. . .
He was supposed to rest after the ordeal, but he insisted on going to their old house and getting more things, including three cats which have been relocated at James' place.
Laura has her class for the driver's ticket today. She had dreams in which she got there a half hour late and found the doors locked. I, too, still have school anxiety dreams at times. The bed is piled high with clothes, and I'm unable to find something to wear. I miss the bus. I get there and the class is cancelled. I suppose when I'm eighty, I'll still have "late for school" dreams.
"Unless you have a representation of Stonehenge around your skull, a tattoo is not a fluorescent sign which flashes your uniqueness. Tattoos have become so accepted in mainstream life that sorority girls sport butterflies on their ankles and fake "tats" come in cereal boxes. "Thus begins Zoe Reilly in the Starnet Dispatches article "Marked For Life", where she proudly tells about the Medusa's head she got tattooed on the back of her neck. (http://dispatches.azstarnet.com/zoe/1998/0918.htm)
Societal attitudes towards ink artwork on one's person have changed. My Dad, back when he was in the Navy had several such designs placed on him. Memory has faded somewhat, but I recall roses on his chest, a rooster on one calf and anchors on each forearm. When he returned from the military, Gramma was furious. She made him swelter in summer's heat with long-sleeved shirts, because it would be scandelous, especially for someone at church, to see his markings.
He tried to burn off the anchors, but I just recall scarred corners where he'd begun the painful process. It was easier to just wear the long sleeves.
September 20, 1998
Where We Began
Round and around,
go the small cars,
round the tall buildings.
Are we mice
caught in a maze?
We chase clues.
Destination eludes
Until we realize
the way out is
where we began.
JAL, 9-20-98
Fashion Square isn't that kind of mall. Laura drove round and around trying to find access to a central mall. But we couldn't find such a thing. The Square (which isn't square, either) mostly consists of huge department stores with giant multi-leveled parking lots attached, and none of the separate sections visibly connected to each other. There may have been hidden access from one store to another. But of course, the stores would have had to be open. Julia said she'd been there with James a few months ago, and saw an area which was an indoor mall. Laura was determined to find this. But then the polluted air got to Laura and her chest began to hurt.
We foolishly left without Laura's under-the-tongue nitro pills, so I took over driving and got us into better air. On route, my mind wandered and the car followed. I 'woke' to find myself going down the road straddling two lanes. Did the poisoned air cloud my mind, or was it the complexity of an eight-lane highway? Laura felt her heart would be in better shape if SHE were driving!
So she took over, piloting us to the Cost Co parking lot at Elliot and Warner, where she sat for awhile, hoping to get some rest. Of course, as soon as the car's AC was turned off, the heat began to cook us. Julia said she'd take over, and did. But then she nearly missed a stop sign. Laura decided once again, her heart would be in better shape if she drove, so off we started again...towards home!
September 21, 1998
----The Second of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths
"As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death."
----George Bernard Shaw
It is not desire which causes suffering, but WHAT one desires can cause suffering. If we desire things which are ruineous to us, and we all have at times, and act upon our yearnings, the results can, indeed, cause pain. Wisdom is knowing what things to desire.
She was younger than I am by nearly two years. She ate right, and certainly got plenty of exercise. Rumors flew about that she used steroids, but she insisted she didn't and never failed a drug test.
She was younger than I am by nearly two years.
(Newsource: Associated Press via Starnet)
Please indulge me as I enjoy a bit of time travel:
I think today of all the pivotal points in a person's life: those when one feels more of a man/woman/adult. (The concept is best expressed in the words "more of a man" since the sexist connotations of "more of a woman" (augh) lend that phrase a rather different meaning.)
This is one of those days. Thinking back, I remember the first non-stretch cup bra I bought, the first time I went downtown on the bus by myself and bought a blouse, the first coat I purchased by myself, the first bank account I set up (Did I ever feel like a hot grown-up!)
And now today the purchase of my first car.
Oh God, I'm going to try for the license hopefully Saturday and get the required insurance. (More bills to make me feel even more grown-up!) Such macho freedom - oh it's powerfully exciting. Can it be that little Joan is gaining further access to the mysteries of the adult world? Well, I guess it is.
Now I must begin replenishing the bank accounts. But worth it, since my comings and goings will no longer be bus-ordained.
I paid for my light blue Ford Maverick with cash. It cost a little over two thousand dollars, if I remember right. I flunked that test I took that Saturday. But I did pass the driver's test on the second try. I didn't tell Gramma I'd bought this car at first. I'd park the Maverick at my Mother's house and return home in my Mother's car.
"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."
---Shakespeare
Three weeks ago, as you know, dear reader, I bought my little (beautiful to me) car. I still haven't told Gramma. It's really a tight situation. I've found myself telling lie after lie to cover it up. And now my Mother informs me that any day the title to the car is going to arrive in the mail. In the MAIL! I deserve it. I'm such a stinking coward. All because I didn't want to deal with Gramma's fury. I was afraid of her. Oh God, forgive me. Now look at what I've done and how am I going to get out of it. I'm never going to be mature until I can make my own decisions and not be afraid to speak up for them. Why am I so afraid of her? If I had told her, she would have had her fit, but she'd have gotten over it. Was I afraid that she would have said my Mother influenced me to buy it? She always, (both Gramma and my Mother do), accuses me of not following my own mind. I do in private, but nobody knows about it.
Six days later I reported that "I'm out of the closet! (Car-wise anyway)" and wished other closetry issues were as simple.
Like this peek at a letter I wrote but never gave 'to my Gramma' to let off some steam:
Dear Gramma,
I wish I could sit down with you and pour my heart out to you, but I guess that is not possible, you are so afraid of anger and honest exchange. I know of late things have been getting tense between us. I can never be your little girl again. I am an adult now, and must live my own life, although you don't see it that way. You are always telling me if you had your way, I would have had braces. I didn't want them then and still don't want them. You are always telling me if you had your way I would have taken something other than
art/art history in school. I wanted art, I didn't want computer science. So many are going into it, the fields bound to be glutted anyway.
And tonight, when you told me, if you had had you way, I would have gotten a different car. Well, I like my car and I like the fact that I picked it. You can't run my life, gramma. Even though you think you know better because of your years, you can't. And it makes me very angry when you try to.
These emotions are set here, frozen in time. I did eventually stand up to Gramma. She learned I was an adult. I guess it's hard for a parent-figure to do that. They always feel their offspring is safer when they are under their control. When the offspring is a child, of course their judgment is better than the child's. Perhaps the evolution from child to adult is swifter than the parent-figure can accept, because of the parent's own shifting sense of time. It happens much more quickly than they are prepared to realize. And so, they don't want to let go of that control. The adult child must learn the courage to speak her mind. This shifting of power rarely occurs smoothly. But it is the way it's always been from the first human family onwards.
Almost one year later after I wrote those frustrated words, I finally proved my independance and got my own apartment.
Here's a short entry of January 31, 1985:
Hold yourself tense to resist the earth's spinning?
You cannot,
do not try.
Up from the mental drains came evidence of a black, clogged mess. I felt crappy this morning and had Laura and Julia read my latest entries because I felt unsettled about them. Should I have shown the dialogue with my Gramma? Did I show her in a bad light? Julia assured me the exchange was not too harsh. Laura felt I didn't show it as it really was, and suggested my funk was because I still have unresolved issues and unexpressed anger towards Gramma. How can one feel that angry and still love the person? What is love? Do we know what it is? Am I so insecure that I still don't want to upset the ghost of Gramma? But she had to know she was in the wrong there. She kept telling me how to live my life. It wasn't right. Why couldn't she understand that? I'll never get that.
Did she go to the grave thinking all would have been fine if only she could have exercised greater control over my life? I don't know. Maybe I'm batting at ghosts.
Do I know what I'm mad at? All I know this rooter rooting is seeming to help my blues. I've been so depressed today. Am I still wanting to address Gramma? Dad never did it. He just caved in and went with the flow. Maybe that's what he meant when Laura and I said goodbye to him before moving to Arizona, and he said "I wish I could do what you're doing."
Laura found my quote of January 85 depressing. She took it to mean caving in to pressure, going "along with the flow". I meant it as trying to resist the passage of time. Gramma was trying to resist the passage of time, and my natural evolution into adulthood. Do most people just do what is expected of them? Is it that much easier for them, not to resist, not to challenge one's family and stand up for ones' values?
I don't know. But even here now I bat at hazy disapproving ghosts, hoping they are not angry with me. I so much don't want people to be angry with me. Is this a female problem? I hear Laura's mother saying it, after an argument with Glen. She doesn't want him to be mad at her. Do males say,"Damn you, I'll do what I want..YOU bend," and females quiver? .But this ancient exchange was between two females, one young and one old.
Oh what the hell...digging digging, what is this existential muck I'm up to my neck in? I feel a sort of futility. This is not my normal mode.
I feel angry. I feel angry because I want to dig down and pull this shit out and see what it is. What is it? Our fears.
Maybe I fear that passage of time, and I want to resist it, beat against, knowing only in the resistance can I achieve anything worth lasting the passage of time...the immortality of my creations lasting past the frailness of this weak easily torn flesh, these bones which disingregrate, joints which crumble, muscles which slacken; which all rot, which all die. Death again, I rage at death, always, ever, I rage at death.
In every thought, in every action, I rage at death...
Damn those who try to profit off of our fears of death, who promise immortality of our consciousness if only we follow their rules. Early on in humankind's history, some people got the idea there was big bucks to be made off of this. And still we die. We may think soft illusions of their consciousness floating on in this ethereal plane, and maybe we can even make ourselves believe it if we fear the big nothing that much.
If we fear and don't want to look at the dark, deep, unknown, eternal void., we can believe what the priesthood says...
Where is this going?
So we puny ants, we fear death. We know we have this brief moment of consciousness, and then....
Was this supposed to be a dialoque with ghost of Gramma?
Yoo,hoo, ghost of Gramma?
Do you exist on any plane? That, too, is just another comforting illusion, most likely. When your brain neurons quit firing, and your heart gave out, so did your last tiny little piece of consciousness.
But we fear pieces of the past still exist to haunt us. We fear all the floating, unraveled pieces of anger whoes ends were never tidied up. It's all there, floating around in the ether, we fear. We can feel it like an invisible dampening blanket settling down upon us.
There are those ghosts, we can feel it, and damn it, we still want to speak to them. They didn't listen when they were alive, why do why think they will listen now?
Because we still long for their approval, their affection, their understanding. That child within us never quite grows up. In any of us, it is still there, whimpering and fearful, still wanting those words of approval and praise. "Good work, Joan", "You are a good person, Joan," "You did well, Joan!"
Well I'm not going to condemn my inner child for wanting this. It would be just one more layer of finger pointing, "Shame, shame, you mustn't!" and another dirty dark fearful negative to add to such an already huge pile of that. And just how much of it my own doing? I take a balancing scale, and see which side is heavier, disapproval or approval. How much does it weigh? Surely if I pull out all my own self berating sticks which I've hit myself with over since I first knew the slimy taste of guilt, surely then does the self esteem side weigh more heavily and I embrace myself. We humans, do we ever resolve these matters, or must we always check the disapproval pile, and see how well we've trained ourselves on the judging." You shouldn't have done that!" " That wasn't a nice thing to do!" "Nice girls don't think that!" "Don't appear so conceited!" "Don't lift your head to look that way!"
you know you are a wretched sinner...
. . .a human, and afraid, too, But that's not quite what I saw. Even they, small too, shivered under the disapproving glare of the big bad God. And an existential terror that opened wide to swallow me, into which I threw myself, the void of it and all the condemnation. I would not believe it then, "there is no condemnation". How does one lift the lid on this? it's so heavy. . .
. . .heavy then and heavier still the collective weight on the consciousness. If I pry this open, what will I find? Festering sores, bright jewels, what? I tear at it. angry as I tear at it, angry. pull it out.
How dare you, all of you, we tremble all together, but you do not understand your own trembling.
But you gave it to me , gramma, and I can't blame you entire, for it was given to you.
Ghost of Gramma, if you're still around, do you understand any better, now that you've left your body?
September 22, 1998
September 23, 1998
September 24, 1998
September 27, 1998
Reaming The Mental Sewage......
If you did, forgiveness would flow towards yourselves, towards others, you'd know your own humanity,
you'd embrance your own humanity, you'd embrace mine. How is this so large a wound to be concealed?
It should have been exposed to the air that it might heal.
But for centuries it has festered, passed on to each new generation as the guilt they must endure
and then it gets passed on again, perhaps to lighten it's weight upon them.
No one ever looks at this burden and sees it shouldn't be carried in the first place.
And so this cycle continues...
but not here, not here.
I was the one to open the box and look at it.
You never did, you accepted it, holy writ,
but I pried it open and saw it for what it was.
And it made you angry
for maybe the light that came out of the box was too blinding.
"There are some things that shouldn't be discussed"
and so fearful me, fifteen years later,
still tremble, that perhaps
"There are some things that shouldn't be discussed."
"You don't want to make yourself look bad,
don't look angry, anger is a sin,
it's bad...don't go there, just be nicey nicey and don't offend,"
and so fifteen years later, I wonder if that entry should have been put up there in a public place for all to see.
I am such a wimp...
No, I am a pure being who wants to do the right thing, I am conscientious. This is a good thing, embrace the purity of my heart on this.
and know there are clues, and I will find them.
There is a path and I will know it.
I was right to share those words...
Has there been any communal plane where you were explained things?
can I touch through this?
I the stray one,
Should I meet you again in another life,
me then, male, but girl, should chance,
I must tell you now, so I can tell you then,
the raging yell of existence
echo from now, until then,
something heard in the nebulous ether.
I will be the stray one,
I will go my own way,
will always go my own way.
you cannot stop me,
cannot not make me feel guility,
not now, and not then,
I will put you on notice of this.
You will hear it, and resign yourself
to the truth I am my own being
through out eternity, MY OWN BEING
and I will not be controlled!
You should know this
You will know this...
So hear this now,
with your ethereal ears
and know it will never be the same again.
We will not let it ever be the same again.
We will not be overpowered,
the tide is turning and you cannot resist.
The world is spinning change,
it will, and you will
and we all will
CHANGE.
