Rent Party

winning in style!

2008-06-24T05:59:00.001-04:00

Vacation in Vera Cruz - VVV

2008-06-23T15:28:00.006-04:00

We break again from vacation in Veracruz to say that here there is also an alcoholic patriarch - they are legion on this planet, it would seem. Although difficult, everything is very predictable. I am moving out of the house and trying to help certain others do the same.

It is quite interesting as a review course. I have always wondered why I left my original life path and I am well aware of the possible negative reasons for having done so. It was once pointed out to me that it might be more interesting to consider what I was seeking and what I was rejecting - that is to say, what the positive reasons were for certain apparently self destructive decisions I made. I think I was rejecting listening to pedantic and machista drunks, and seeking freedom from them and from their apologists and running dogs.

Anyway, I am still on vacation so Stephen, Jennifer, and Geoffrey will just have to post. These should ideally be musical, artistic, and otherwise festive or decadent posts, since this is Rent Party.

EPA HEY!

Lord Kitchener

2008-06-10T13:46:00.003-04:00

This is Lord Kitchener on Toco Band. I may have posted it before, in some place, at some time, but it is a brilliant performance and worth posting again.

I am still on vacation, but I have notes to make.

NOTE 1

In the psychotherapy and Al-Anon sessions I attended to deal with family alcoholism, it was not permitted to discuss the problems alcoholism had actually created, but only those it might have created. This was because problems one acknowledged must not be serious. If one acknowledged problems with any ease, it must be that there are other, more melodramatic problems one does not mention. That is why I now blog about these issues instead of attending psychotherapy or Al-Anon. They, of course, would say I was in denial and that I was being controlling, but I say I am merely avoiding their dishonesty and abuse.

NOTE 2

One of the problems living with alcoholism created for me, and which psychotherapy and Al-Anon, by the way, recreated, was that it interfered with work. I had known since elementary school that it interfered with social life, but only in high school did it begin to interfere with work. In this era and indeed, into my thirties, I thought that the problem was me: I should be able to function in alcoholic environments, normal people would be able to, there was something wrong with me that I could not.

Even stranger is that it was not until my late forties that I understood that it was my right, and everyone's, not to have alcoholic environments interfere with work, or social life, or anything. I thought it was a luxury that I, in my weakness egotism, had insisted upon for most of my life.

My reasoning went like this: normal people function with alcoholism. There is something wrong with me, so I cannot, and I therefore avoid alcoholic environments. This is a special luxury which I take, but do not deserve. I was always ashamed of not functioning better with alcoholism and alcoholics, not meshing with them seamlessly. As a very young adult I was even ashamed of not wanting to drink as my parents did. I may actually have been ashamed of the family situation - one I often described to others, but which none of us knew how to name.

NOTE 3

My father was and is always willing to do whatever it takes to convince himself and others that his alcoholism has no affect on anyone. He was and is completely ruthless about this, and he is even willing to admit it directly if called on it. YES that is what I want to do and am trying to do, YES drinking is more important to me than anything or anyone, YES, is what he says.

My mother was and is always insistent that my father's drinking has been the bane of her existence, but she is also very interested in his continuing to drink, so that she does not have to focus on anything else or face the question of what to do with all the time and space that non-drinking would free up. She says this directly.

My mother says she is not jealous of my father's reading, and I believe her, but I notice that she is jealous of his relationship with alcohol ... although I think she prefers he be drunk, because alcohol is at least an enemy she knows. I know why she seems to be jealous of reading. She will interrupt anything anyone gets absorbed in, she has to be the center of attention, that is why I could not do all the homework in high school.

NOTE 4

Fragments:

- "These acts of violence to which you refer take place only in your imagination" [my parents said that, as did Anglais and as does my current boss ... they will not recognize that I am not speaking of physical violence, and "violence" is their word not mine].

- "You are chaotic and need discipline" [all three of the aforementioned entities say this]. In fact: I am organized and disciplined by nature. They want to be the ones in control and so my self-discipline is what they call "chaotic" ... and they do what they can so as to sabotage my activities, and to create chaos and drift generally (for the entire group).

NOTE 5

A Post-It to myself on Anglais said:

EXASPERATING!

+ stingy to the point of impracticality [note a similarity to my mother: strange combinations of extravagance and insistence that she is completely broke; crazy obsession on money that looks a lot like anorexia]

+ all trouble expands, because he makes small problems worse and does not attend to practical details, so that what should not be a problem, is [note what he said to me: "I am an adult, and as an adult, I have practical problems you could not understand" ... exactly what my parents said when I pointed out how illogical and irrational their way of thinking about things and handling things was]

+ constant turbulence

+ I feel used in the relationship, and I feel that I need help - either nurses, drivers, and other medical help so I do not have to serve Anglais so much, or support to leave. I feel, however, I cannot bother anyone else for help, since I should either be able to handle the relationship or not be in it. And yet I am afraid to leave since I am afraid of what Anglais will do, to himself and / or to me, if I do leave. And the people whom I have asked for moral support in leaving, have refused it. They defend Anglais, or say I need to communicate my needs better, or say I should find a way to stay in the relationship without having Anglais' outrageous behavior affect me.

+ Anglais is mean and I am only in the relationship because he begged me to stay. I keep telling him that if he wants me to continue to stay he has to be nicer. He says no, and I am afraid, as I have said, of what he will do if I leave, so I am slightly mean to him also, and he uses this to confirm that I am crazy.

EPA HEY!

POESIA SEXO MARIHUANA

2008-06-09T23:35:00.004-04:00

I am still on vacation, and this blog has not lately been nearly so decadent as it was meant to be, so I offer you POESIA SEXO MARIHUANA, an excellent magazine, and Pako Rizzo singing the old tango ANCLAO EN PARIS.

EPA HEY!

Sunday

2008-06-08T10:28:00.000-04:00

EPA HEY!

Des choses que je voudrais savoir...

2008-06-07T09:45:00.003-04:00

Because his aunt paid for us to go to college, without placing any restrictions upon what college it could be, my father decided he had no authority to advise us on college or careers. I thought this was very strange. In someone else it could have been because he would have liked to manipulate us, through claims of financial troubles, into the colleges of his choice, but my father is not that way. I thought he was just mad because he wanted all of his aunt's money himself. That would have been more like him.

My mother would have liked us, or so she claimed at the time, to live at home and go to the local college. She said that was all they could afford, and that we were too immature not to live at home. I was grateful to my aunt since it would not have been possible to pass college courses living there. I also knew that even without her money, if we were as poor as our parents said we were I could get financial aid ... or even if we were not that poor, so long as our parents would emancipate us, although they were unlikely to want to give up the tax deduction.

So they were confused and confusing in those days, but I still wonder what my father would have advised, had he felt he had the authority to do so. He was ideologically opposed to the sciences, to the social sciences except for economics, and to history as a major (although it would have been all right as a minor). He favored the humanities and math, and I took math although I could not make him believe it was as abstract, as pure, and as useless in a career making sense as were the humanities. He was disdainful of the professional schools, i.e. engineering, business, medicine, and law. He advised strongly in favor of the humanities and the fine arts, and against graduate school in these fields. He advised very strongly against going into academia.

As we already know, I became very highly educated in the humanities and the fine arts, but then fell back onto carpentry like so many men in my program, and became a manager of large construction projects like my uncles and great uncles who did not have the chance to go to school.
What would my father have advised, had he felt free to speak? And, given that he spoke so much, why did he feel he had no freedom to speak? Had the money spent on our education been his, would he have spoken less negatively? I will never know the answers to these questions, but I would like to.

EPA HEY!

2008-06-03T04:21:00.002-04:00

I, Rent Party, really named Cybèle, am still on vacation in Veracruz. This is my picture, and this is part of its explanation. I was born in Madrid, but the family is from Veracruz; we grew up in Louisiana, but now I live in New York.

EPA HEY!

Des Fragments

2008-06-02T07:02:00.007-04:00

We break again from vacation to capture some key fragments. Here in Veracruz I am in part visiting family (yes, we are from Veracruz, although we grew up in Louisiana) but in part I am visiting MY home.

I

On people who enjoy obstructing others and whose goals are to create chaos and drift.

One of the things I find insulting from such individuals is that they not only take such great advantage of my kindness but that they so underestimate my intelligence. They actually believe they can divert my consciousness to silly details, or that they can control a conversation by quoting platitudes.

This is infuriating because it is so demeaning. One is being open, understanding, and generous, and that is taken by others as yet another opportunity to take advantage.

II

On how one can be as honest as one can, and yet conversations go nowhere since what one is said is taken as malice, weakness, or insanity. The substance of what one is saying is blocked, and cannot be understood.

On how this is what happens when people go up against machines.

On how this happens at my job and also with my alcoholic parents.

On how I should stop expecting understanding from these entities.

On how my parents, and many others, try to squirm out of it by saying "but we are all sinners" or some version of this. In such a situation, if one is being honest oneself and generous oneself, one only colludes in getting oneself encoded as the problem.

On how irritating it is that they think their very transparent rhetorical manipulations work - that they underestimate one's intelligence to that degree.

On how the platitude "but none of us are perfect" is used to deflect discussion of any particular situation, and on how incredibly patronizing this is ... and how transparent it is as an attempt at deflection and manipulation.

On how people insist upon believing one is a child and unreasonable.

On how, in the case of my parents, they were immature when they married, and glommed on to a simple doctrine of propriety to see them through. When this was insufficient they turned to alcoholism, which meant there are two machine like paradigms or functioning.

On how well this also explains my current boss. Immature when he took on the job, he gloms onto some very simple principles whose substance he does not understand, and in which he lacks the flexibility and depth maturity might have given him. Thence the rigidity and limitation ... they are all he has to see him through ... and he is so insecure that he cannot learn, but can only dictate from his tiny throne.

On how infuriating it is that my parents show, and even say, that they really do not care, that they have chosen their bottled God willingly and with their eyes open, that they always cared about that God more than anything or anyone else, and it was always our responsibility to see that. On how infuriating it is to hear them recite this cant which they have absorbed, in a distorted fashion, from their secret psychologists and from Dr. Phil.

On how willing they STILL are to say that the greatest responsibility in this situation is and always has been mine. They were drunks when I was born and if I decided to be born to them their drunkenness is my problem not theirs - why wasn't I wiser to it as a child? A-HEM. They do not say this directly but what they do say comes down to this.

On their idea that since I stand to inherit them it is more or less all right. While they live, they are to torture and deface me, but it is their right to do so, since being disabled by them I will need the inheritance they intend to leave, and since they are in fact leaving it. On how infuriating it is that they are also willing to say this directly. On why it is that I have so often said to them that they should cut me out of their will, and also that I would be happy to live in a boardinghouse, eat Top Ramen exclusively, take a very well paying job, and deliver every extra cent I make to them in exchange for not having to tolerate this behavior from them.

On this idea again: that I would be happy to live in a boardinghouse, eat Top Ramen exclusively, take a very well paying job, and deliver every extra cent I make to them in exchange for not having to tolerate this behavior from them ... Perhaps I should take that literally. If I mean it then I mean it, and it means I am not as afraid of financial and other risks as my parents and others would like me to be. This is food for thought.

III

On what I would like to say to the alcoholic parents.

1. Parent A's excuses for continuing to drink, and his bargaining with it (e.g. the effects of alcohol on him are unpredictable, addictions are strange, others have trouble with them, the effects his addiction has on others are not really effects of the addiction but of their other problems), are TOTALLY TRANSPARENT.

2. Parent B's blaming the addiction for all of her problems, her refusal to develop any attitudes less dependent than those she has, her insistence that if the drinking would end (which it will not) everything would be fine, etc., is contributing to the problem. She will not give an inch and is thus more difficult and in a worse, more complicated situation than the actual alcoholic.

3. I am not willing to put up with any part of the charade, especially not staying around when drinking is happening for my mother's sake, to help pretend we are having dinner. I do not care how rude and ungrateful it may be seen of me to just leave when they have cooked a special dinner for me and so on. I also submit that these cycles start in the morning, which is itself an attempt to recover from the night before. It is why I should never stay in their house except on the off night, the rare occasion.

IV

On what I note.

1. I am really angry about their decision, long since, to commit to alcohol above all else. I worry about their pain and all, but mostly I am really angry about their willingness to victimize us for the sake of their drunken God. I am white hot angry.

1a. They make it clear that they really do not care and never did.

1b. This makes it evident that I have always been far more accommodating and nice than they deserved.

1c. Their discourse around the whole issue is and has always been incredibly manipulative. Before, they were straight out abusers. Now, they think they are Dr. Phil and speak in faux wise tones.

1d. The ways in which I have mutilated myself in an attempt to satisfy them are completely ridiculous.

1e. To a large extent I have ruined my life for their sake and it has not been worth it and they certainly do not appreciate it or even recognize it although for many years I thought that if I could only manage to mutilate myself to the right degree, while also achieving in a field they would approve of to a very high degree, they might at last find me acceptable.

1f. Really, of course, what I wanted them to find acceptable was my non acceptance of their insanity.

2. Epiphenomenon: not seeing them makes it harder to afford and justify visits to their area, which is also mine. This makes me really nostalgic and cut off. I have got to separate this from how angry I am otherwise because it is a side issue and it is what makes ME bargain with the scene. I have to forget it because I am also not interested in RUINED visits.

2a. All of this would of course be a lot easier if I had more money or if I lived closer. But then, my not having more money is one of the ways in which they have manipulated me into place. What I must do is get more, or arrange to have more, or simply arrange more independence around the question of spending time in what is also MY home one way or another.

EPA HEY!

2 REVIEW

2008-05-27T23:34:00.003-04:00

----------------------
2 REVIEW

It is not difficult to guess that Marechera’s attitude in his choreodrama may have been related to overly levated expectations regarding British society, which Marechera almost certainly had entertained (his sense of let-down upon encountering those of the upper classes who took their education lightly has been well documented). Lloyd Matowe details in his unpublished novel, The Garden of Eden, how Britain was represented to those of the colonial culture as somehow being a perfectly elevated and fair society. "Buckingham Palace" is an emotionally equivalent construction of Matowe’s deliberately overly inflated term for Britain, "The Garden of Eden". Nonetheless, the overall sense of Marechera’s choreodrama is that one does not enter Britain on one’s own terms, but on the terms that one becomes British – terms he was not prepared to accept:

Wipe your nose you’re in Buckingham Palace
Whitewash your race you’re in Kensington Gardens
Shave your pubic hair you’re a Heathrow Asian virgin
Shoplift and run the bullet is already in your back Wandsworth
The children’s meals are cut their gums bleed with education
I said wipe your arse you’re in Buckingham Palace

Marechera’s behaviour may have seemed out of place in Britain, but in the country he had come from, with its enshrinement of an anti-authoritarian chic during the war years, a certain degree of outlandishness was not all that unusual. After all, for the white colonial leaders it was a way of thumbing their noses at British propriety and British notions of civilising order. Jarring and outlandish behaviour had the political – as well as thoroughly psychological value – of undermining the stature of the British authorities who would condemn Rhodesia’s UDI.

By denying the validity of British culture, one also undermined the political basis for Britain to tell the colonial State what to do. (However, the undermining of the relationship between Britain and Rhodesia occured at a behavioural level, and not necessarily at the level of implicitly held values -- on that level, the colonials were more British than the British.) After all, the one country was politically not like the other, but the latter had to be shown to have attained its own cultural identity as evidenced by its making up and following its own rules (but not so extremely as to not be on the right). [Note — see pamwe chete, for white cultural eccentrics] The cultural milieu of the rebel state was a perfect for producing cultural eccentricities. The emphasis ( in terms of a kind of Robinson Crusoe innovativeness to beat the sanctions) on waiving of the rules of normal civilisation (also to beat the sanctions and to win the war) led to the adoption of a certain pragmatic nihilism in social conduct, as part of the society’s norms. One could argue very easily that Marechera’s eccentricities only exceeded this cultural norm to the degree that he had been traumatised by the force of injustice within the colonial society. (Most of all, he had suffered as a victim of extreme poverty and its political correlative – that is, very narrow prospects to improve his lot.) This is in fact my view.

Although Marechera’s rejection of British authority was related to a cultural default: the culturally dominant white regime’s rejection of British authority, it is even more significant to note that Marechera also strenuously opposed the political domination of the white colonial authority. In some ways, this didn’t help him as he was, despite himself, as he acknowledged, a product of Ian Smith’s education system. That didn’t change his determination or political direction – he could still oppose Ian Smith’s ideologies (by realising the limits of his classical education, for instance; or by adapting and corrupting the English language, rather than speaking it perfectly). However, he was astute enough to realise that he was, to some degree, opposing what was already within himself. It was this inner knowledge that he had to oppose himself in order to find a way forwards, that made his approach to knowledge shamanistic. For what he found within himself – the aspects that he considered corrupted – were also salient within the culture of the new Zimbabwe. By diagnosing the illnesses within himself, he could point the way to purifying and regenerating the culture. First, however, he would have to dwell within the liminal realm where one’s own persona is not only burdened with the aspects of life that signify death, but is the bringer of new possibilities. In such a way, the writer addresses the newly liberated Zimbabwe, which stands as his reprobate lover and his muse.

By the time of writing “Throne of Bayonets”, the writer has embraced a position of absolute freedom for himself, living for the moment. Maybe such a concept of freedom was never far from Marechera’s embrace, but now we see that it has come to practical fulfilment in a hand to mouth existence on the streets. Remarkably, the focus in his poem is not on himself and on the difficulties that his situation poses, but on finding a solution to the unfulfilled potential of the revolution in Zimbabwe. This approach is just as paradoxical as it might seem, for, in being prevented from leaving Zimbabwe by a government authority at Harare Airport, the writer has taken to sleeping on park benches on the streets -- as well as under a hibiscus hedge, which the poem mentions. Having divested himself of any personal attachment or relationship to any authority or system of control, he finds himself alone in the company of death. An encounter with the metaphysical Absolute of individual freedom is also an encounter with death. To “cross over the bridge” from social existence and participation to the other side of freedom/death is shamanistic. It is to go beyond what is conventionally and definitively human. This shamanistic role in this light has strong philosophical credentials.
Only by entering this realm of death, this realm of “over-man”, can the writer transcend his ego – that is the limitations internalised by the social and historical conditions of his time. Such a person who goes beyond narrow concerns for self, as determined by the limited nature of a particular time and a particular place is an “overman” who goes beyond humanity as it is currently known and described.

“I teach you the overman. Human being is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

Such an individual who goes beyond is different from one who takes a conventional human perspective, for in the process of one repressing anxieties about one’s mortality, one loses something valuable – insight into a broader and more complex perspectives on the world. However, in going “beyond self”, one observes the social dynamics at play both in oneself and in others. For instance, the writer transcends the conventional anger he might otherwise feel at finding himself in a situation that began with white, colonial oppression, and that ends up only with (black) Nationalist repression.

The poem – simultaneously transcendent (of ego) and immanent (in its openness to the immediate sensations that allow for scrutiny of immediate realities of the post liberation situation) – goes beyond merely conventional politics. Needless to say, the narrative does not trace the development of the more obvious political aspects affecting the author’s life, but rather searches ever more urgently for a solution to the social dynamics affecting Zimbabwean society (black and white) at large. This superior process (both ethically and cognitively) is also costly: The process of discovery is a soul journey within the realm of death, (which is, in some ways, social death, since it is a realm definitively beyond the human.) An ego-based experience is always based on core values of fulfilling one’s own needs. An egotistic perspective is inferior to one that transcends ego, as it draws us back into identity politics and an eternal war based on the fallacious cultural construction of “races”.

The author begins his poem by telling his story of precarious survival and then calling upon his “tenant soul” – his inner self as transcendent muse -- to show him what the deeper realities of his personal and historical situation. Through encountering death/transcending himself, he faces, head-on, the hidden fears that would otherwise restrict his vision: He discovers “terror [to be] the totem of truth”. Thus, his writing explodes a conceptual divison of Nature versus Culture, as the two essentially opposed human categories of engagement.

There is much more to be said for the shamanistic side of “Throne of Bayonets”: The infusion of dread in ever sentence, the sense of history moving forward relentlessly whilst minds and attitudes stand still, is deeply ingrained and infinitely resonant as we pass through the poem, echoing the violence of the past. The manifestations of the spirit of the past in the concrete aspects of the present can only be seen with shamanistic eyes.

Marechera’s sense of politics is – because of its ethical nature – deeply shamanistic and oriented towards healing. Some critics have accused him of not being involved in politics, seeming not to realise that Marechera’s political insights are mostly in the form of forewarning against the errors of the past and present. Since much has been said about Marechera’s ostensible failure to politically engage, it is worth spending a few moments in determining the difference between conventional politics and the shamanistic posture of warning and vision. Much of Marechera’s writing may have been dismissed as “serious political commentary” because of its jocular vein or aspects of biting irreverence, but serious satire lurks – albeit in a sly and esoteric fashion --within most of Marechera’s poems and other writings. For instance, “The Zimbabwean Children’s Liberation Festival”, ostensibly a little piece of nonsense about bagging drums and farting, demands that the next generation of Zimbabweans should not repeat their parents’ errors.

BOOM! Lulu thundered out of life into God’s wrath.

“Fatboy says those who take the gap are cowards.”
“Fatboy says Smith and Walls should have been hanged.”
“Fatboy says reconciliation only works when justice is seen to be done.

Otherwise all whites are lumped with the killers.”

What the attuned eye of the poet sees is that lurking underneath the apparent pomp and ceremony of the liberation festivities are the tendencies of the next generation of Zimbabweans to set off grenades, causing trauma and screaming; to exploit past racial divisions between black and white by inflaming them for political gain, and to wax overly-sentimental over (black) Nationalist themes:

Little Farai squeezed Shona juices out of his brown eyes
And, with a flourish, burst into God Bless Africa.
“Bless you,” Fatboy murmured asweat with sweet mankind.

This is the kind of politics that Marechera eschews, as one of deeper insight into the link between psychological violence and politics. His more profound approach gives us a psychological reading of politics, rather than being a political position in itself. (When, for effect, he chooses to use political rhetoric, Marechera is pro-anarchistic – against being ruled by others.)

In Which Life Resembles a Murder Mystery

2008-05-23T02:07:00.003-04:00

Whodunnit? We break from vacation to comment. I should have known not to believe the official version, which was furthermore heavily sold to me and whose 'other side' I never heard. I believed the narrator and I should perhaps not have done so.

In the official version, Group A is the culprit. Group A victimized a minor victim, B, and a major one, C. Group D sacrificed B, because B was in her own way also a culprit, but rode to the rescue of C, who was a hero. Now it is revealed to me that C is also a culprit, perhaps a greater one than A.

Some questions: who really victimized B, and was B really a culprit? Is it possible that C actually victimized both A and B? And if this is the case, is D protecting C out of friendship . . . or has D been bamboozled by C? Or, on the other hand, is the mystery even deeper: did D use C to take revenge upon A, with B as collateral damage? Would that explain why D is so protective of C, and why C is so nervous?

EPA HEY!

En vacances

2008-05-10T18:15:00.003-04:00

Rent Party is on vacation and will be until August! Unsane, Geoffrey, and Stephen are just going to have to post! Meanwhile we will be dancing La Bamba in Veracruz.

EPA HEY!

ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

2008-05-06T01:32:00.001-04:00

Women in Congo need your help

White Hot

2008-05-05T23:33:00.004-04:00

This is a guest post from a friend, not normally a collaborator here, who for reasons of discretion cannot post it on her own site.

Another of the reasons I do not work with 'feminist' or Women's Studies faculty is that so much of their energy seems to go into justifying the boorish behavior of men. "He means well," they say, "and he is surely struggling with his behavior and attitude." The rejoinder "Consider what he did" falls upon deaf ears.

*

Another reason I disagree with the Twelve Step movement is that they do not encourage people to leave abusive relationships. "S/he will only get into another one," they say. In the first place I find that terribly condescending - that is to say, abusive. In the second place I note that people who are in one abusive relationship may be in two or more - at home and at work, for example. Getting out of one such relationship may in fact show them that abuse has an exterior. It may help them see how to get out of the other. They may also live in an entire culture where abuse is the norm and non-abuse the exception.

*

I do not like the way women my age treat teenagers - they are so snide and condescending it makes me want to cringe. I just told the dueña of my ceramics studio that I did not want to have to watch her speak to the resident seventeen year old in the tone she uses to her. The dueña said she speaks to her in that tone because she likes her. My stomach turned over, and my shoulders and lungs froze. I wanted to take my lovely, newly glazed Japanese tea set out into the concrete yard and throw it piece by piece against the wall. I resisted that temptation by promising myself I would write this post.

*

I do not like having to engage in, and parry teasing by the lady's husband, either. He thinks it is amusing banter but I think it is abuse when not just a distraction. I try to laugh at him, make him see the silliness of his ways, because I have already paid for this month's kiln use and I do not want him to ruin my things. He wants us to "talk" about my disagreement with his behavior but I think that is just another attempt on his part to take up my time.

*

When I was a small child my brother used to bully me and my mother would egg him on with an eerie grin. I protested but it was explained to me that since I was older and smarter than my brother I owed him the opportunity to bully me. To protect myself, I should pretend it was not happening. This would make it stop.

Then I went to school and boys bullied me. My mother did intervene and understand when some girls bullied me. But she said bullying by boys was a compliment. It was something to be glad about, even grateful for. Something to grab onto and negotiate with.

When I found out in the second half of the fourth grade that marriage was not obligatory, I felt the strongest rush of relief I have ever felt in my life. If I did not marry, I would not have to share living space with a bully.

Nevertheless I may now be sharing studio space with two. It makes me jittery for the reasons I have already explained and also because I suspect these two people are acting out with or on me the tensions in their marriage.

That, of course, is what my parents did, and when I find this replayed I am ready to use any weapon I have against the perpetrators - the larger and the more destructive, the better.

*

I still need to learn better ways of dealing with abusive people. Negotiating with them is not the answer, and just ignoring them or pretending one is not, or should not be affected is no answer, either. I find myself trying to ignore or negotiate with abuse for all too long a time. Then consciousness of what is happening breaks through in white hot rage and I am capable of advancing upon people as my father did, and hitting them right where I know it will most hurt with precise and damning words enunciated perfectly through my sharpened teeth.

Witnesses sometimes tell me I have been justified in my reactions but I know when they have been out of line - too mild or too strong - by how I feel physically.

EPA HEY!

Francis Bacon

2008-05-04T22:05:00.000-04:00

In my company we have a President, a Vice President, a Treasurer, and some other honorary figures, including secretaries, at the top. Then there are several Managers, of which I am one. Under us are Supervisors, and under them are Workers.

Today's featured post is by the Field Negro. It quotes Francis Bacon, via Jay Bookman, thus:

'Always tell the king the truth,' Sir Francis Bacon wrote in a letter to his friend. Tell the king what he needs to hear, not what he wants to hear.

'If you flatter him, you betray him,' Bacon warned. 'If you conceal the truth of those things from him . . . you are as dangerous a traitor to this state as he that riseth in arms against him.'

This is of course very useful to me in my current struggles with the President, one of whose names actually is King (to be fair, while we are naming names, I will reveal my own name: Cybèle).

Those are parts of our true names, but now, using false names, I will list the managers in my company who have left, and those who are now here in their places. I will not include those who have come and gone in the meantime, nor of those who have stayed, as I have. I will list only those with whom I started and who have left, and those who have replaced them.

The reason I am doing this is that although I had not thought of it in a direct way, our company has changed. I think it has changed for the worse, and it may have changed its color or its culture. I would like to see if that is true.

Members of the original crew of Managers who have left are: Benedito, Deborah, Domingo, Francisco, Marie, Oscar.

The new Managers are: Amadou, Antonio, Carolina, Fabrizio, Monique, Nicole.

And so I get it. All of the old Managers were interesting and colorful, but three of the six new ones are mere organization 'men'.

How many, then, are left in my cohort? Let us see: Alonso, Jean, May, Rose, Susan, Ricardo, and me.

Ah, what a reduced group! Half of the original crew is gone! No wonder things seem so colorless nowadays!

How many new ones are we hiring? Two. How many of these are colorful? One. Should we offer him a salary supplement to make sure he comes and entertains us? Yes.

This brings us to our other featured post for the day, on the importance of personality in the workplace. I favor personality, and in this I am apparently unusual.

EPA HEY!

Yo no soy 'americano'

2008-05-03T03:28:00.005-04:00

"Yo no soy americano, pero comprendo el inglés." This is the Corrido de Joaquín Murieta, sung by Los Madrugadores, and it is very beautiful.

EPA HEY!

May Rent

2008-04-27T19:13:00.002-04:00

Now having studied expenses for several months and discovered how and where I overspend - I really, really must cut and it is hard to see where and how and maintain any sort of quality of life, but it is necessary - I am going to a new system.

We know there are $3000 each month and that about $2000 of it, or less if I am lucky, go to standard expenses and fees, most if not all of which are automatically deducted from checking. These include mortgage, another loan, various fees, and utilities.

That means there are $1000 left to spend. This is for everything else: food, fun, shopping of all kinds, charity, gifts, health, beauty, home repair, office expenses, research costs, everything. It is not enough. And it varies.

What I do see consistently is that groceries and things bought at grocery stores are $400 each month. What I can do is buy in bulk, never eat out for anything except social occasions, join the new organic co-op I have heard of, and cut.

What I will do is spend everything in cash. I will take $200 every week and spend that or less. This will leave something to save, or for problem moments - or so I hope. I will or will not keep notes / keep track of things here, depending on how things go, but I will not keep the same kinds of records I have been keeping because it seems so obsessive.

General guidelines are that I must keep from buying anything, or spending any money on health, travel, and so on that is not paid for from savings. I was always taught that health was a necessity, and my travel is a business necessity so I always just did it. I also do not really have excessive shopping habits.

I am not a penny pincher but for a non penny pincher I am economical. Yet I must now live more like a penny pincher because I want to keep traveling (even travel more) ... and to spend money on health and beauty (even more) ... and occasionally buy beautiful objects (although less than I have in the past) ... and do things to the house, as house situations arise. So I am going to find some ways to penny pinch.

EPA HEY!

A Perception

2008-04-25T23:44:00.002-04:00

Something my mother said made me see her, through a glass darkly. The reason she is chronically depressed is not just because of my father's alcoholism but because she wants to leave and does not feel she can. The reason she does not feel she can is not that he supports her but that she does not feel she should.

It is his alcoholism that makes her so lonely. It is her feeling she must stand by him, not an unwillingness to work or be on her own, that makes her feel so trapped. That is why she feels suicide would be her most graceful exit. Unwillingness to work or be on her own are ways she has of covering up for my father - that is, if she said she was staying because she felt bound to do so, it would dishonor them both, so she says it is her unwillingness to work.

It is easier to say that she is unwilling to work and that she wants to commit suicide than it is to say she wants to leave. Suicide is a metaphor for the death she suffers in the marriage and also the social or identity death, or transformation, she would have to suffer if she left it.

I am a reproduction of her although I do not play this dynamic out in the realm of marriage. I play it out elsewhere.

EPA HEY!

Iansan

2008-04-20T23:48:00.002-04:00

Wednesday is the feast of our saint, Iansan, so it is time to get ready. See her dance!

EPA HEY!

An Update

2008-04-19T19:44:00.002-04:00

I have heard from Katya!

In honor of this I have created a new drink: mix in a blender equal parts by volume of freshly squeezed orange juice and very ripe canteloupe pieces. Serve with ice cubes. It is subtle and sophisticated, you will see.

EPA HEY!

Blogging Against Torture

2008-04-15T22:30:00.004-04:00

This is a meme challenge! Everyone who sees this post is invited to join the effort to blog against torture!

H/T Lumpenprofessoriat. Nezua also participated, although this was synchronicity and not part of a concerted effort. If you have participated, leave a comment and we will add you to our list!

ETA: Amorphous Funk has an excellent anti-torture post, and reminds us to sign this petition.

EPA HEY!

Vagina Dentata

2008-04-15T21:22:00.000-04:00

Vagina Dentata

Metablogging

2008-04-15T05:16:00.003-04:00

See a semi-technical underside of blogging in this comments thread.

EPA HEY!

Provisional Objectivity

2008-04-14T23:13:00.005-04:00

Now I have discussed the current family saga (see several posts just preceding this one) with this friend, who pointed out that my parents' attitude and modus operandi here is the same as it is on everything.

"It is not about you, it is about them; no matter what you do, they will act as they do." This was a very useful comment.

I also heard from Juanca and we talked a lot of things out. I am very relieved.

*

Al-Anon, of course, would have said I should not have contacted Juanca in the first place because as the Adult Child of an Alcoholic I will have a tendency to get too involved. My parents would say the same, because they know that I know that my father was drunk when he spoke to Juanca.

Do not get involved, keep all secrets. Al-Anon is just like an unreconstructed alcoholic family, and the reason I do not like it is that it exists to keep the family members in their holding patterns.

There is one thing, though, that I learned from it: "codependents" tend to be judgmental. I had always thought my mother's disdain for everyone came from her education on class. It does in part, but it is also Al-Anon style judgmentalism.

I think my father learned something from the twelve step community too: you have a permanent flaw that you cannot see, you must learn to see it and then must make amends to those you have harmed.

*

That was what he kept telling us when we were children. It also what he told me about academia - I was not fit for it, could not survive in it. That is why I am a construction manager with a Ph.D.

This is in many ways a better job than a professor job, so I do not mind. But the fact that my father found a way to beat us over the head with the twelve steps is yet another reason I do not like Al-Anon.

EPA HEY!

On Sweetness

2008-04-14T10:20:00.008-04:00

There is sweet vermouth before lunch, wine at lunch, and brandy afterwards. This lasts from eleven to two. There is whiskey or gin before dinner, wine at dinner, and Amaretto afterwards. This lasts from five to eight. All of that is sophisticated and European. None of these drinks are sweet. Alcoholics drink sweet things without eating. By that sign we shall know them.

*

Most nights my parents get drunk and say things they claim are "the real truth" they repress when sober. Recently it was about their cat, now "more of a pest than a pet" because he is getting older. While drunk, they decided to have him euthanized. The next morning my father asked my mother, "Did you mean it? Shall I take him down?" And my mother said, "Oh God, no, I love the sweet, beautiful cat, we were just drunk." Yet when they are drunk they claim to express their true feelings, and insist that their morning feelings are sham, mouthed for propriety's sake.

Afternoons they are "tired," by the way, not hung over. The five o'clock drink is an elegant sunset cocktail, not the hair of the dog. My parents do not fully recognize that everyone does not get drunk most nights, say strange things and make strange decisions. They believe this to be a universal custom if not a also natural phenomenon. There are eccentrics who do not participate in it, yes, but they are eccentrics. On question of the cat, furthermore, they do not realize that they could ask me or my first brother to take him in, since he is to some extent also our cat.

While on the one hand they have long stated that they are incompetent to discuss with us aspects of our adult lives we really would like to discuss with a parent, our parents also insist we are not yet old enough to care for a living being like a cat. This although we have children and pets of our own, and although we, the estranged yet telepathic twins, are 49 years old at this point.

*

When we were babies we did not understand our parents' words at night. When we were toddlers we were asleep before they were drunk. As preschoolers, however, we began to hear them speaking. We challenged them on their statements and criticized their drunken decisions. My father's retort was that we could not have understood him because we were too young. But we do understand you, we replied, to which his new retort was that he had said nothing of the sort and we were "making it all up." He was convinced that he was rational when drunk and that being drunk was normal, and we took him at his word: be rational, then.

*

One of the more chilling aspects of my parents is the way they take the controlling, demeaning, diminishing statements of abusive people as "sweet." They liked Steve because he said so many "sweet" things about Katya - things which painted her as a slightly retarded twelve year old he was kindly caring for. Katya is ten years older than I, more intelligent and more competent, and my parents' characterization of these statements by Steve as "sweet" has always chilled my blood.

*

Very early on my father convinced us that by having the personalities we had, we were terribly hurtful as people to my mother. He convinced us that we should work to change our personalities so that she would not be in so much pain. He further explained that our personalities were not bothersome to him, only to her, and that he was protecting us from the full force of her wrath.

However, my father explained, the greater part of the world was like my mother. It was as dangerous a place as she was a person. We would be safer if we changed our personalities to please her and the world before we entered it. He would only be able to protect us so much, for so long. This was an excellent technique for the destruction of our relationship with our mother, among other things. It is also one a very paradigmatic abuse technique, and it deserves to be studied as such. "I am protecting you from abuse, and there is something terribly wrong with you which I am kindly forgiving." Ultimately every abuser says this, and we must all watch out for it.

*

My mother, for her part, believes she owns all of us and all of our friends, and she throws terrible tantrums if anyone indicates to her that she does not. These tantrums demonstrate to us that my father was right: we have hurt her terribly by existing, and we need to reform.

*

Our friends idolize our parents. They are more liberal and more rational than anyone else's parents. I do not like to introduce friends to my parents for this reason because they end up being my parents' friends, not mine. Soon enough it is my parents who are reporting to me on my former friends' lives and saying, "Do not tell A... that I told you this, she would not want you to know, but she is having a terrible problem and we are so worried...."

EPA HEY!

Et encore...

2008-04-13T16:45:00.006-04:00

I keep wanting to say more things to Juanca. Even from writing this I have come to understand why: I urgently want a sibling. My parents have arranged things such that there is no communication among me, my four sisters, and my first brother. The only sibling relationship I have is with my second brother and he is young enough to be my son. There were six of us in the original generation and our parents have succeeded in fragmenting us. But back in the day, there was also Juanca, and once again the parents are doing their best to stop all communication.

I have not seen Juanca in 25 years. I have all of his addresses and I could send him any thoughts I wanted to - although I do not really see the point of overloading him with mail. And although the things I have to say are for him, the people to whom I really want to express the underlying ideas are my parents and Katya. They, however, do not welcome conversation. Since I do not think it really appropriate to use the literal Juanca as their stand-in, I am doing that here. Perhaps by saying the things I want to say to Juanca, I will discover the things I want to say to my parents, to Katya, and to myself - and ultimately, be able to clarify them into a form which could, conceivably, get through.

Here are the (partly reiterated or reiterative) points for Juanca, not necessarily in the form or tone I would use for actual delivery:

1. I do not know why Katya left you and I never thought it to be my concern. I was only told that it involved a disagreement between you, Katya, and the parents on funding for her college education.

My reading of what I heard was that they were neither willing to help her remain at [LSU] nor to emancipate her so that she could qualify for financial aid, and that you did not understand that without help she would have to work full time; nor that she had far more lucrative job offers in New Orleans than in Baton Rouge and that this mattered; nor that working full time she would have had to transfer to [UNO] anyway because UNO had more night classes. I imagine she would have felt torn in loyalties and also fought over. She would have been a battleground in a power struggle between you and the parents, when the question was really her education. If that was what happened, I can easily see how hard it would have been for her to juggle everyone's projections and desires.

However I have no idea whether this was what happened and once again, it is not my affair. I am aware that our parents were very upset with you and it is my suspicion that they were unjustified. It is Katya who knew you best and it is her life we are talking about. My only reaction now is to be glad you're back in the picture as a friend.

I am younger than Katya and we were all young when you two got together, so I assimilated your presence as more as I would have that of a new brother than a new brother in law. I got used to "Katya and Juanca" very early on and this configuration still seems natural to me - although perhaps it should not.

2. I do not expect you to betray confidences. Nevertheless, I have not seen you in 25 years. I find it strange that you see yourself as Katya's doctor and/or Steve's, and I am not sure it is advisable to diagnose BPD on the basis of a telephone conversation. Although you know much more about the current situation than I do, and although I believe I have good reason to trust your perceptions, I am not comfortable simply taking directions from you without further discussion. That, combined with the parents' discomfort with my acting alone and the negative effects this could have on my future ability to help Katya, is why I did not just call Katya when you said I should, but rather discussed a plan with the parents.

3. I am not in a powerful position here because it is our parents and you Katya has contacted, not me, and all of you have information you are not willing to share. But I must say I hardly think you are interfering in anyone's life. On the contrary - being in touch with Katya and alerting all of us to the situation was in my view the responsible and friendly thing to do, and I am glad you did.

In real life I am going to say some of these things to Juanca. In a reduced version.

EPA HEY!