The pitfall trap

Have I been feeding this beast (my blog) regularly? Depends on what you mean by regularly. I usually consider that to mean "every day", but to my shock, I now see I haven't posted anything much all week. And I think I know why that is.

Something will sneak up on you sometimes, something that snags some issue from the past. Ten months ago I had a serious falling-out with someone whom I considered to be a reasonably close friend for a very long time (he was maybe 6.5 on my friend-o-meter). Then, this past Easter Sunday, and without any warning whatsoever, he died. I only found out about his death because I was part of a mass mailout: somehow I had been left in his email address book, maybe because he didn't bother to remove it.

What does it mean when someone dies, and there was unfinished business? Maybe it WAS finished, and that was the whole trouble. I ask myself sometimes: Glass Character, why is it that you seem to be cutting certain people out of your life? And I always come to the same conclusion. They're people who, for one reason or another, appear to have seriously lost their way. In particular, this applies to their personal integrity.

It happens. It happens that people begin to live in a way that is not only deceptive, but deceitful. It happens that a person who has been refreshingly tart turns irreversibly sour. It happens that people begin to use you as a dumping ground for resentments that they're too afraid to meet at the source. Or maybe it's just more convenient that way.

So what happened? It's not as if I have lost all my friends, but I will no longer give quarter to anyone who sucks my energy away, or demeans me in any way, or hauls their support out from under me and still expects ME to support THEM (i. e. act as a bottomless receptacle for their toxic waste).

This most recent shock - and shock it was - has had yet more shocks attached to it. When he suddenly died of a massive stroke, my former friend left his longtime partner completely in the lurch financially - not merely penniless, but in an abyss of debt that he cannot possibly cope with. This is so extreme that it's quite possible he will end up homeless and/or have to declare bankruptcy, not exactly a desirable legacy from a 25-year relationship. The community has set up a GoFundMe account for him which so far has only taken in a few hundred dollars.

How could he not have known they were in such dire straits? I don't believe he did. I think he just trusted his partner to take care of him. In some ways, he was like an old-fashioned wife who has no idea of the state of her husband's finances until he dies. Then comes the nasty surprise, and the crushing burden that accompanies it. 

An important aspect of love is financial responsibility, though many people would be incredulous to hear me say that. Or even appalled: dirty, crass money, attached to something as sublime and ideal as Love? Well, think of it. One must live - isn't that so? To live, one needs financial support of some kind. Unless you think you're going to live forever, you must make provisions for your partner, especially if that partner is more than twenty years younger than you (meaning he may have another 30 to 40 years left to live, with no significant means of support except a disability pension). If you don't make these provisions, if you don't think about it or bother about it, it's not only arrogant but thoughtless, ignorant, and - I think - cruel.

Ten months ago when we had our falling-out, I was reacting to something that I now see reflected this arrogance and thoughtlessness, well-concealed by his "sweet" public persona. I felt the ground being cut away under my feet, destroying what I thought was his support. But then, being truly supportive was something he did not seem to know how to do, or even have any interest in.

Suddenly I knew nothing, I shouldn't even be taking one step towards the issue at hand because I had not had the years and years of training he had, and blah blah blah blah blah. He had to be right, always, and his righteousness had to be acknowledged. That's the way it went, those were the rules, and I wouldn't play by them.

My reaction and throwing the friendship into reverse is only a particle, not even that, compared to what his partner is going through now. He has less than nothing: he's in the red, the minuses, though to what extent I don't know. How could this happen? How could two ageing men living quietly in one of Canada's favorite retirement communities get themselves into such a godawful mess? I have a bad feeling about it, and it seems to confirm some suspicions that there was a lot going on in this case that is deeply disturbing to contemplate.

But I can't write about it now.

When people die, they are often elevated to sainthood. I'm sure this will happen tomorrow afternoon at his memorial service. It's just something we do, a social custom, or else a superstition (don't ever speak ill of the dead or they will rise up out of their grave and fly around your house making pictures jump off the wall and going "Wooooooo!"). Suddenly we can't say enough about them, though it's not really about the person who died at all. It's to make US feel better about harbouring all those resentments and negative feelings, to pretend they don't exist at all. 

But sometimes they exist for a reason.

It's Friday now, and it hasn't been a good week for blogging because I just feel kind of flat. It depresses me when someone I respected turns out to be this irresponsible. Or should I say: this big an asshole. For that's what he was, or he wouldn't have held his partner hostage to a crushing, stigmatizing financial burden he can never repay.  At its worst, debt is dishonest. Even at its best, it's like living on top of a gigantic hole with a fragile floor over it (and there is a name for that, by the way: it's called a "pitfall trap") that will barely hold your weight. Sooner or later disaster strikes, and it all caves in. Then the person you supposedly love the most must fall into the abyss.

To quote Bob Dylan, whom I've been thinking a lot about lately: "But oh, what kind of love is this/Which goes from bad to worse?"

We carried you in our arms

On Independence Day

And now you’d throw us all aside

And put us on our way

Oh what dear daughter ’neath the sun

Would treat a father so

To wait upon him hand and foot

And always tell him, “No?”

Tears of rage, tears of grief

Why must I always be the thief?

Come to me now, you know

We’re so alone

And life is brief

We pointed out the way to go

And scratched your name in sand

Though you just thought it was nothing more

Than a place for you to stand

Now, I want you to know that while we watched

You discover there was no one true

Most ev’rybody really thought

It was a childish thing to do

Tears of rage, tears of grief

Why must I always be the thief?

Come to me now, you know

We’re so alone

And life is brief

It was all very painless

When you went out to receive

All that false instruction

Which we never could believe

And now the heart is filled with gold

As if it was a purse

But, oh, what kind of love is this

Which goes from bad to worse?

Tears of rage, tears of grief

Why must I always be the thief?

Come to me now, you know

We’re so alone

And life is brief

TAG-ON: Obsessed with Dylan again, and re-reading one of the bios, I had a bizarre experience last night. Didn't sleep worth a shit, didn't even think I WAS asleep all night, because I kept seeing or experiencing a long series of short films about Dylan. These were all from different times in his life/career and not in any order. They looked sort of like they were on panels or things like piano keys and I went from one to the other, and I didn't want to see them but couldn't stop. Sometimes I felt like I was IN the movies, but probably not. I wanted to get out of them and felt like the movies went on all night and I got no sleep at all. I was full of anxiety because I don't do well when I don't sleep, and serious sleep deprivation has been known to make me go completely crazy. But when I woke up, I said, Jesus, Margaret, don't you know those were dreams, and if they were dreams you must've been asleep?

TAG-ON TWO: While Dylaning around on the internet last night, I found a crazy and incredible speech he made at the Grammys in 2015, after receiving some sort of award. It just went on and on. Normally if he gets an award, he nods tersely, takes the award and goes home. In this case, God knows how long the speech took, but this is the part I want to share with you because it moved me so, and somehow ties in with the video I used to illustrate this post.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Baez. She was the queen of folk music then and now. She took a liking to my songs and brought me with her to play concerts, where she had crowds of thousands of people enthralled with her beauty and voice.

People would say, "What are you doing with that ragtag scrubby little waif?" And she'd tell everybody in no uncertain terms, "Now you better be quiet and listen to the songs." We even played a few of them together. Joan Baez is as tough-minded as they come. Love. And she's a free, independent spirit. Nobody can tell her what to do if she doesn't want to do it. I learned a lot of things from her. A woman with devastating honesty. And for her kind of love and devotion, I could never pay that back.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Connecticut school shootings: not again, not again

 

 

First there was that groan, the sound that has become almost involuntary of late:  oh, no. Not again. That sense of headshaking disbelief and dismay, and horror. Another mass shooting, this time in an elementary school, and right before Christmas! And then the words echoing in my ears, something my 7-year-old granddaughter had said to me earlier in the week: “My school was in lockdown yesterday.”

 

WHAT?

It turns out that “lockdown” in elementary schools has become as routine as fire drill. This is a word I never heard in my childhood, or in my children’s. In fact, I never even heard it 20 years ago. So what in hell is going on here?

I could go on and on – I have a tendency to go on and on when I am confused, frightened and angry, whipping up my adrenaline against the awful sinking depression and despair that is surely to follow. I could go on and on about gun culture, about how Americans seem to think that the solution to guns is “more guns”. It has been a contentious point between Canadians and Americans for as long as I can remember, and has now become inflamed as never before.
 

 

Here is my point. If you have a deadly weapon in your hands, you don’t have to think. All you have to do is make your way to a promising venue, a mall, a movie theatre or an elementary school, and squeeze the trigger. Pop, pop, pop, the sound registering as “firecrackers” to people who are used to hearing the phony “BLAAMMM” of TV shows and movies so that they don’t even know enough to respond.

As a matter of fact, almost everyone involved in these horrors says something like, “I thought I was in a movie”. Oh, how distanced we have all become from what is real.

My feelings are like a dark kaleidoscope, all broken up and shifting and moving. Pieces jump out at me, jagged as glass, and I don’t want to look at them.

I like to watch a very lightweight entertainment/news program called Inside Edition, the kind of show that usually has a funny animal video at the end (though, come to think of it, almost every TV station in the world showed the Ikea Monkey the other day). A cop or some other security guy – who pays attention to these things? – was demonstrating to the host what to do “when the guy opens fire” (not if!). This was in a mall, and the security person said, “The last thing you should do is run.” This reminded me of nothing so much as the instructions for dealing with an enraged bear or a cougar or some other predatory animal.

 

No, if you run you’re a moving target – prey. You’re supposed to crouch down, take cover - preferably behind one of those big metal garbage cans with the bars on it. Bulletproof, unless (he said) a bullet accidentally ricochets off the wall and gets you in the back of the head.

I almost can’t write about the kids right now, but I will, a little bit at least, because writing is the only way I can even begin to get my mind around it. One thing I notice about mass shootings that affect children:  right away the grief counsellors pounce on them and insist they talk it all out, tell them everything that happened to them, every horrific detail, preferably over and over again. Lately some of these counsellors have come under fire (sorry) for squeezing memories out of kids who might be “processing” them a different way, who might not be ready to say anything, or (amazingly!) might prefer to talk to their Mum or Dad or their grandparents.

There is a grief industry now. I don’t remember anything like that when I grew up because there was no need.  I also don’t remember one single shooting in a school, not even of one child. Nor do I remember any of this happening with my own children.

 

The game has changed, obviously, dramatically, irrevocably. How are we to raise a generation of kids who are anxiety-free? All right, no one is anxiety-free, but how are we supposed to take them to the mall – or the movies – or even drop them off at school without a horrible fear of chaos and screams and blood on the floor?

I could say it’s the boom in technology, and I think it’s a factor. I realize that this is a highly unpopular, even taboo and stigmatized thing to think or say, but I will say it.  No one has a conversation any more: they text, phone, “tweet” or go on Facebook, an ironic name for something with no face.  Sociologically, we just haven’t had time to catch up with this explosion, this game-changer that everyone assumes is an unalloyed good.

 Who questions technology, for God’s sake? You’ll sound like an old fuddy-duddy, a party pooper, a Luddite. You’ll sound like me.
 

 

We can’t see each other’s facial expressions any more (and Skype doesn’t count because, in my opinion, it’s theatre). It’s all “lol” and “wtf” and poorly spelled messages that don’t really mean much of anything.

I recently asked my husband in exasperation, “What do these people talk about on their Smart Phones all day?”

He looked at me. “Nothing,” he said.

Tacking away with your thumbs like some self-obsessed crustacean does not make you more human, does not help you communicate anything of importance. It only feeds your vanity and narcissism and  helps you shut off your feelings so that nothing is quite real. So when the awful time comes, you’ll think you’re in a movie, playing the role of the hunter, or – even more tragically – the hunted.

 
(This is a sidebar. In catching up with the latest news developments, I came across an article that said it has become increasingly popular for women to text while - prepare yourself - giving birth. Next they'll be reporting on the quality and intensity of their orgasms, or perhaps the success or failure of their bowel movements. Or how about blowing your nose? As with photographing the Grand Canyon but never actually looking at it, texting ensures you will never really experience anything in your life.)

 

We can’t take it all back, turn back the clock, and I’m not saying we should, but someone HAS to respond to this escalating nightmare with something that actually makes a difference. Alienation and unaddressed rage have become a huge problem in contemporary culture, leading to widespread bullying and other forms of sadism. How easy is it to bully and threaten and mock and shame vulnerable children when you’re not even in the same room with them?

But unfortunately, to kill them, you have to be there.

Doesn’t anyone make any connections any more, or are they afraid they will express an opinion that’s unpopular?  Do these problems have no roots in personal alienation and the dizzying rate of social change, or is each shooter “just some nut with a gun”?

 

I think we need to go back to the very beginning and learn how to be human again. How to put down the devices and stop the madly clawing thumbs and look at each other, really look. And talk.

And figure out what’s wrong with everything now, and what’s right with it, and how to deal with things as they go faster and faster without our conscious awareness because we have all become so terrifyingly numb.

 

 

Letting off steam

Heigh-ho! It took me 24 hours, but I just saw an example of. . . irony. Here in my very own blog.

The theme of it is supposed to be boldness, genius and power and all that etc., when the truth is, I'm about as chickenhearted as they come.

Telling everyone not to make mistakes!

And rather bitterly.

But with a certain sincerity, at least in the moment.

I don't plan on quitting, just proceeding with a hard-hat on.

I DESERVE SUCCESS. I deserve it. Ha, la!

Keep on chanting it, and, Oprah-like, it will magically appear before my eyes.

Well, maybe. I have ironing to do.