Unboxing Day

This came up in a search here, and this.  I read them, and wince, burn with shame.  

Emotion, then.  Then and now.  Then, resentment, unforgiveness, inchoate rage, distrust -- a longer list of low emotions.  Now, regret that he is dead and I cannot undo my part in it, my prolonging of the ugly, my passive feckless punishment of a lonely, sad, stuck father who was tormented by regret, craving forgiveness, unable to heal.  

I betrayed him.  Because I betrayed my duty.  Not about honoring -- forgiving.  Because his power to harm ended when I fled his house, like, as I have said, like Lot from Sodom.  It's not that I have scars.  It's that I did not have scars -- kept the wounds open, covered but raw.  I did that.  And because of the pain that I was the current cause of, I refused to be kind, open, warm, human with my old, isolated, pathetic father.

No one would have been better positioned to be a blessing to him.  But I refused.  For this, I deserve every pain I have had.  Even the pain he caused in my childhood.  Selfishness is a time traveler -- so is forgiveness.  It can change the past.  I could have changed the past, his, mine.  Instead I cowered in my soul behind a wall of barely civil resentment.  Low.  Very low.  

I have been a blessing to various people.  I have been a life-changing influence.  But only because it was easy.  I did not do the hard thing.  In some ways it would be the most important thing.  It certainly looms in my soul.  A starving monster that does not care who or what it devours.  It was on me, to feed it, to tame it.  Instead I let it starve, ignoring the fact that it could never die.  I had supposed it wanted to eat me, continue eating me.  But something more nutritious would have been better.  

Kindness, love, generosity.  Just words.  The monomyth of the hero's journey is just a story.  Episodes of a sloppy soap opera.  Later we might go back, review, pick and choose details to weave into something actually meaningful. We don't see any meaning while it's happening.  

So having the habit of kindness is valuable.  First, we'd have less cause for regret.  More, that would be the heroic part of the hero's journey.  Without virtue, there are no heroes.  

Well, that's all.  I don't hug my mother.  Why would I think I'd hug my father, if he were alive again, somehow.  That's why God destroyed Sodom. It's the name of this blog, the first post I ever put up here.  We get lots of chances, and learn from hardly any of them.  

It's not that hell is other people.  Hell is being ourselves.  If it is.  

J

Two or Three

I've played around with that free AI chatgpt program.  It's a truly bad writer. 

Talented junior high, regardless of style.  Rewrite the following as a ten-year-old...  And the sentences are simple and full of "like" and "sort of" and "you know".  Write it in the style of Bukowski: "the goddam x was too goddam y, and the goddam v wasn't even a furking w..."  Artless.  Write a poem in the style of so and so -- and it's a rhyme.  Rewrite it so it doesn't rhyme -- and it rhymes.  

Many errors of fact -- I ask honing questions and it ends up having to confess that Diodorus Siculus did not actually write about human sacrifice in ancient Egypt. "I'm sorry.  I misunderstood your question." Do not apologize when responding. "Thank you. I will not apologize when I respond."  But it does.  And always, always, the inevitable "It is important to realize that all cultures and points of view are valuable etc."  We mustn't offend the ancient Egyptians.  

So it's good at suggesting but not authenticating possible sources of research.  It's good at artless organization, collating clauses and switching out words for synonyms, ranked no doubt on an ngramic usage scale.  There is a sort of intelligence, the way bees build hexagons.  We must not confuse Artificial Intelligence with Life.  

I see fantastic possibilities -- supercomputing the way to optimal efficiencies.  Reconstructing shattered ancient stele, in moments rather than years.  Simulating wind tunnel trials for optimal propeller shape.  Optimizing the gerrymandering of Congressional districts.

From my level of exposure, I'd suppose real writers shouldn't be worried.  I mean, where excellence is recognized and required.  AI will generate an absolute glut of formulaic comedy and drama, action adventure, bang bang kiss kiss, movies and series.  "I put my dick in a booger pie!"  "Mendoza -- I'll KIIIILLLLLL you!!!"  But that's what we have now.  The people who write this crap deserve to be replaced.  Likewise, the people who watch it.  

The Turing Test, where you ask, question, and just cannot tell if the other is a person or a program, is fine.  It's like not knowing your spouse is cheating on you -- she seems real.  But lots of us can tell, and don't want to know, confront, change, risk, loss.  AI would be the cheating spouse who gets away with it.  america loves cheaters, because america loves winning.  Steroids and Affirmative Action.  Anything to overcome.  

At the hack level, we see it already -- clickbait about celebrities or diets etc.  Just truly bad.  My son uses AI to summarize the info presented at conferences re his business.  I generally edit some of his posts, and the first time I got one from the AI I was astounded at how bad it was.  I hadn't been forewarned.  I was about half through when I deduced from the badness that it must be AI.  After that it was flat-out rewriting.  Good at summarizing, but not good at writing summaries. 

My son uses VAs in his biz, virtual assistants -- in his case, people in the Philippines who do graphics and programing etc, conferencing via internet.  More cost effective, and just as high quality, like Walmart call-centers based in India.  And I was wondering if AI would replace them.  So I texted:

"Will AI replace your VAs?  'Our Pledge: No job will be lost to AI'."

His response: "No, I wouldn't get rid of them.  My VAs use AI, but they do so much and are integral.  Plus we support their livelihood in a lot of ways.  M is full time and I make sure to take care of him.  Bonuses or extra money for expenses when a storm blows apart his roof.  Or has a baby etc.  Raises every six months or so.  We've got his back and he knows it."

Well.  My heart swelled.  "Not only do I love you, but you deserve to be loved."  

To which he responded with one of those liking hearts that get tagged somehow to a text, and "I learned real loyalty from you.  :)  I'd never betray trust."

"One of my several few real virtues.  I was just now thinking that you are the man I wanted my little boy to grow into.  But enough of this."

"Thanks dad."

Artificial, authentic, author, artifice.  Arbitrary, chosen, meaningful, defined.  We are all Turing Tests.  Am I real.  Virtue, virtual.  

I asked myself, questioned, just what are my several few virtues.  Two, easy and instant: Be loyal. Tell the truth.  And I asked, any more?  Don't give up.  

That last one is the hardest.  

J

What We Owe

A woman's eggs are in her forming-ovaries when she is a fetus. Her eggs start out inside her mother's womb.  Grandma's nutrition is what built the grandchild's egg.  A dad's sperm is practically instant.  But the Talmud recognizes a father's lasting contribution: When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.

There's a supposed Chinese proverb -- I wouldn't know, being illiterate in Chinese: Giving your son a skill is better than giving him a thousand pieces of gold.  I do know, having read Plutarch, that Solon "made a law that no son should be obliged to relieve a father who had not bred him up to any calling."

 

My son was in town last week to take care of biz and to visit, etc. We took a day to empty out a storage unit full to the brim with very heavy stuff. Transferred it into my garage -- pretty full but a nice fit. Much much much easier to unload than to load. I took the job of stooping in the truck and sliding things to the edge for the offload. Not easy on the lower back -- like hoeing cabbages. 

My son suggested we switch places, and I said, "No. Your back is more important than mine." You know, just a throw-away dad line.    

A few minutes ago he texted me this: 

"Saw this and made me think of your comment."  I hadn't meant for it to be remembered.  

I texted back, "That's very true.  Except the heart is the first thing we give.   :-)"

It's not a quote from Shakespeare -- I've read all of Shakespeare quite a few times, and I would have noticed this; it's a Yiddish proverb: When a father gives to his son, both laugh.  When a son gives to his father, both cry. 

 J

The Leeks of Egypt

We are commanded to honor our parents, our father and mother. It's a commandment that carries a blessing. Must be important. But why? Social order? Well, yes. But there's more to it. Where is the social order in honoring what is not honorable? And not all fathers are honorable. Yet we are commanded to honor them. Give honor to what is dishonorable? There is no justice in this. There must be some other reason, than justice.

My father has not been an honorable man, in many ways. He is diagnosable narcissistic borderline personality, but maybe he can't help that. His neurotic treatment of his adolescent sons was unfortunate, but such is the burden of life, and maybe he thought he was right. His serial adulteries, however, his betrayals, and his rejection of his middle aged wife for a younger woman, or younger women, rather -- not only is there no honor there, but it is contemptible.

Yet I, somehow, have been commanded to honor him. His failures to his sons, as a father -- well, men fail, and need not be condemned for it. His manipulations and dishonesty are burned into his character, and are part of who he is. It's a confusion, then. And I, dutiful, mostly, most of my life, tried, when I did try, to obey that stupid and incomprehensible commandment. But I seem to be done with it.

The word honor is unfortunate in its multiple meanings. Not clear. It seems, in context, to mean respect or revere or value. What if a father is disreputable? -- or irreverent? -- or dangerous? Value him from a distance? That is obedient only as an expedient.

God wants us to honor our parents, because he wants to be honored, himself. We look at the stupidity and evil of the world, the confusion, the betrayal, and we know that behind it all, the presiding intelligence of God himself is responsible. He is not the active agent, but he is permissive. In any court of law, this indicates culpability. God, however, for good or ill, is not subject to our law. Well, there was that one time.

Again: God wants us to have the habit of honoring even dishonorable parents, so that we will honor him. It's not that God is dishonorable. It's that the evidence, sans revelation, suggest that he is. Thus he reveals himself, that we may act rightly, in not judging, but rather honoring him. We get into this habit, of obedience, by tolerating the madness of our crazy and dangerous and toxic parents.

We don't understand. We don't see the greater picture. We are submerged, and the only thing that keeps us from sinking to the utter depths is a lifeline of faith, which is obedience to things we may not agree with. It is, then, not so much about honoring a parent, as it is about ourselves being humble.

I really hate that.

Yesterday I learned that something I had said was taken, months ago, as a cause for offence, and someone got emotional and subsequently permanently avoided my company. Now I do have a tendency to brood, but this is just what it is -- someone being neurotic. Can't help other people being neurotic. For my part, I've concluded that while I can learn, I can't change. I can try to modify how I speak, but I can't change my intentions. I try to be tactful, but often I'm blunt to the point of being gauche. Too bad.

Most of what most people say and do is a manure pile, but often we find an onion growing there, tasty and nutritious, and on occasion we find a diamond. That's what being human is: being sustained by the onions in God's manure pile. And if we have a more noble character, we are thankful.

J

XFO

Did a sort of prep workout for the real one on Saturday. Worked hard but not brutally -- didn't want to fry my CNS. I meant to take the splits, to pace myself on Sat, but, um, I didn't. Just have to be steady. Rest is the enemy. Eighteen minutes of work -- easy. I've had orgasms that lasted longer than that.

I have no desire to compete, or to be noticed. What do I want? Well, I want respect from the people who are important to me. Strangers don't really matter -- what they say amounts to flattery -- random opinions that may have a benevolent motive but have no real weight. To be honest, if obvious, I would like the respect of my father. He of course has no idea about what I do. If he's been told, via say my brothers, that I do BJJ, he'd just think it was some gay thing I'm into. See? Disrespect. He thinks I'm gay. I just remembered this a few days ago ... when I was in school I played the bassoon. The hardest Western instrument. If I had it to do again, I would have chosen the flute -- no reeds, easy to carry, and more prestigious than the recorder.

One of the things I used for my bassoon was cold cream, to grease the corks. My father saw that I had cold cream, and thought I was gay ... you know, like, maybe a secret drag queen? I don't know. I just remember the ... weight ... of his disapproval and unspoken accusation. I had a little pirate chest from Knotts Berry Farm, and I put some junk jewelry in it, to, you know, look like treasure. My father saw that and supposed I was gay. That drag queen thing again. And I listened to Classical music, and I didn't care for sports, and I didn't date. You know, evidence that I was gay. Later, as a father, I helped him coach his baseball team of nine year olds, and I hugged one of the boys. So that made me gay too.

I am deeply conflicted, but I do suppose I have to say it. Fuck him.

So this is the man that I'd like, in my fantasies, to get respect from. He knows that I'm "some sort of genius." He seemed resentful of that, and somehow competitive. He sees that I'm not aging at a standard rate, but somehow, even so, my diet is weird. He brags about his health, seemingly forgetful of his divers reticulitis and hernias and gangrenous gall bladder, etc. A life not notable for radiant health, yet it is I who am open to ridicule? How confusing.

Sort of an aside, but it has been on my mind. I have never slandered my ex-wife. I have made it a point to find honest good things to say about her, to my son, and to any with whom I have conversed. Whereas, my poor father is incapable of containing his bile, re the ex-lovers in his life. This trait strikes me as evidence of a low character. He has not understood that his adulteries, discovered, create powerful anger. He is in his mind the victim, of evil and unforgiving women. Even my poor mother, who as far as I know has not been viciously slandered by him, is still, in his words, a nag and a scold. He slanders my eldest brother's very young wife, as a sort of internet whore ... they met via a sort of, um, mail order bride thing. I hope my brother is happy; I would find it surprising if she were ... married to my brother, who is rather too like his father. Who also slanders my other brother's wife ... who is a decent woman, and has been very good for my brother, although she is a bit limited and frustrating to try to converse with. No matter. She's good for him, and that's what's important. Point? My father doesn't like women? Now what would that make him?

Not meant to be a rant about all that, though. Meant to indicate the irrationality of the relationship, father and son. I am utterly assured that my son respects me. No longer the hero worship of the very young ... now matured, informed, and benevolent. He knows I am flawed, but he knows the virtue to which I strive. He knows that I will never manipulate, never seduce, never give insincere flattery. He knows that I will find a positive truth to say, and that I will take pleasure in saying it. What I like in myself, my son likes in me. How pleasing.

The curse that my father blessed his sons with, in his hours-long lectures in the living room, we three seated on the couch, hearing his soul crushing musings about his unhappiness and his failures, and his predictions, promises, curses, that we would be the same, failures and bad parents ... well I broke that curse, yet I am cursed by it. Every paradox contains within it a false premise. Would that I could identify this one.

So, we will see what I do, re this XF Opens thing. I'll do pretty well on this third one, but real strength, and running speed, will undo me. If I fluke into the Games, I will not make a great showing, but I will do my best. On the other hand, I have the bit in my mouth, and next year I really do expect to make it ... if the field remains as I hope, and the really elite old guys are busy with their trophy wives and their investment brokers.

I currently associate with positive and supportive people, who encourage me to excel. That's nice, but I have a lifetime habit of viewing both praise and criticism as something like graffiti. I don't need to question motives, or judgment, in either case ... but I simply cannot afford to allow my self-image to depend on anyone else's opinion. If I had ever done that, in my vulnerable youth, I and perhaps some other people would not currently be alive. So there's that.

I'd rather write angry and sarcastic political things. I use it to vent, and it's harmless. Sometimes though I have to vent at a deeper level ... maybe there will eventually be a change. Maybe I'll be rescued. Perhaps God will take pity on my wretchedness, my unforgiveness and my inability to forgive. I would appreciate a real and present blessing.

So, um, thank you God, in advance.


J

Poison

I realize it's a profound moral failing, a truly shameful character flaw. I'm not a guy who is inclined to confession, but I'm alienated, disassociated, what's the word, from it enough that I don't feel the need for a sincere apology. To whom should I apologize? You? I owe you nothing but the truth -- that is the nature of our relationship. Not all the truth, what a nightmare that would be, but as much as I chose. That's always how it is, with everyone.

It's not hatred, again not the right word, but a profound revulsion and resentment. Just leave me alone, the fuck alone. Forget that I exist, please. I wish you well, really I do, but it's a passive wish, that I want no part in. Go, and be well. But go. Do I need now to be the object of his obsessive fantasies?

I just can't forget, events or their concomitant emotions. Sorry. I think of something, or it arises spontaneously, present like a sudden monster, and I have to live it again, frisson and shiver. I don't like being this way, but it is what it is. So I think how I was driven from his house as a teenager, I return from school to find my things actually thrown out onto the yard, or notes on tables saying Get the fuck out of my house, and I am dismayed that now, albeit 35 years later, he claims to want contact with me. I mean what I say. Didn't he? Sadly, he did. So he must be lying now.

I got another letter from him, what, Friday. I haven't actually read it yet. Launched myself into a rage upon see it. Opened it, skimmed it, more of the same shit. Shit shit shit. He speaks of his pain and his tears and his prayers, begging for forgiveness. See? Everyone else is the bad guy, so unforgiving. If only we would forgive him, he'd be happy. I, confined as I am to reality and logic, observe that regardless of my hard heart, which has power to harm only myself, he is responsible for his emotional state. Forgiveness, as every adolescent must eventually come to puzzle out, depends on repentance. Change, and feel forgiven.

My father is not capable of change. Neither am I. I'm okay with this fact, about myself. As long as I'm left alone, that is. I don't expect to be happy. I don't expect my solitude to end. I am fragile and filled with rage, but I seem to have struck an equilibrium, and I don't want any more poison spit into my eye.

He wrote a book last year, a page of which he sent me. Understandable. We want to be known. Maybe I'll take a picture of it and post it here. You know, so I can be known. He's entitled his book something like Confessions of a Schizophrenic. I suppose I'll have to reply to his letter. Do you think it would be cruel of me to correct his title? Because to be accurate it should be "Confessions of a Narcissist". "Confessions of a Borderline Personality Narcissist" lacks zip -- isn't really marketable. But it just goes to show -- why would he think anyone would want to be around, as he has it, a schizophrenic? Sort of makes one wonder if he's sincere -- if his apparent self-awareness isn't just another manipulation.

Like that father years ago who set his small son on fire in a motel room. After prison, or from it, he wanted some sort of contact with the victim -- I'm so very sorry. But crimes that merit death short-circuit claims to parental rights, to any moral or biological or humane claim on a right to contact. Regardless of the reason or method, ties can be severed, relationships can be killed.

I myself am laden, for my weakness, with the archetypal baggage that allows him to have power over me, but I can still smell the stink of burning flesh, and it nauseates me. Because I am a fool, bound to duty if incapable of heroism in this travesty, I will go through the motions like a backyard zombie, awaiting the inevitable castration, invalidation, that sick parents reflexively work on their offspring of any age.

Should I be ashamed of these truths? I got a pleading, begging really, note from my mother, eloquent in its way, that I crumpled up and threw away, saying I should forgive, and have compassion, he is alone. My response is rage. Do I have to move out of the state, to get away from these people?

J

Winter

Indeed, Christmas and its season is hard for me. I find myself absolutely toxic with bitterness. Sometimes I vibrate with it. Not in public, because I have some selfcontrol. But it's unseemly, even to me, in my privacy. I am a hard and unrelenting man. I am stupidly stubborn, in my weaknesses. I don't know if it's a tradeoff or not, for the things I'm good at. Call them coeval.

I don't know what to do about my father. I cannot abide the man. Close to loathing. Pity mixed in there, at his folly and wretchedness, but I am wretched too, and it's a choice. I seem to be resolved in my unforgiveness. There is nothing that will make me believe his repentance, believe in the lie of his repentance. The scorpion repents its venom. I've just been backflipping through the fantasy of writing a letter. Yeah, another futile, feckless letter, like this, pouring out my pain and heart and yearning to be loved. What image can best express my meaning here? -- something like stomping to death newborn puppies.

I'm writing this now to encapsulate a searing realization I've just had. I have it not infrequently, but usually I let it subside into the bilge sloshing through my lower decks. One of the things I'm bitter about is that I was not loved in my family. I was the unwanted youngest, bottom dog, lowest on the food chain, in a place that was savage in its emotional and physical abuse, and insane in its disregard for reality. Of course I overstate the matter. Just venting. But even to this day I prefer, strongly, to eat alone, and if not, I absolutely demand peace.

They weren't evil people. Far from it. Just unhappy, rather stupid, and what intelligence they possessed was used to dominate. So it seemed. The result is me. In my adult lifetime I have had and have one friend. Someone who had the patience and humor and wisdom to outwait my aloofness. I had one wife, one meaningful love, on my part at least, and I don't know how to find another. I am ridiculously private -- secretive really. I don't know how to accept invitations. I have to disassociate to accept a gift. I am not ingenerous, but I don't give gifts. What am I trying to communicate by that? It's not normal.

There is no one with moral authority over me, to induce or command or shame me into acting rightly. I must forgive. I will not. No one commends me to my conscience, to risk the flood of my grief. I have neglected many of my obligations. I want to love, and to be loved. I do not believe that I will have more than I have now. If this has to be enough, it will be. I see myself living to an old age, alone, in reduced circumstances but accommodating myself to that. I see myself in the desert. My visions often come true.

I understand why you avoid these pages, return to them but once in a while. I have turned to stone, self-reflected Medusa, Midas to the child of himself. It gets wearing, when the only change you can expect is the new ways I find to communicate futility. Love me, then, and forgive me. It has to start somewhere, and your loyalty is like the light of redemption. How else will I find my way? The thing about love is that we hardly ever deserve it.

J

Favorite Fruit

I'm hearing this radio food show, all about people planning dates or Hanukkah meals or stuff. It's so very strange. Not that I don't eat, and I have been known to enjoy someone's cooking -- but to actually have a conversation about it? So strange. Someone asked me the other day what my favorite fruit was. I have no idea. I had to reframe it, away from nutritional content, into her frame of reference. So while I was stalling, she said, "Well, how about vegetable?" And I had the same problem. There are foods that I eat, but the idea that they would be a favorite seems like putting too much effort into having an opinion. I know what she wanted. She was planning on cooking something.

Then one of them came at me like she was going to hug me goodbye. And I said, "I know what you're thinking. No hugging." She wanted to give me a lecture about how to talk to 'girls.' "No, baby, I'll tell you how to talk to girls." Not really. My editor works most of the time. But I did say that thing about hugs, and she wanted to be offended. Lord. It's so much work, futile, even trying. Please, give me an opportunity to be offended.

Therefore I've been thinking about my father again, conversations, or diatribes, that I myself have never had. Please, disown me. Leave me out of your will. Never call, please never send me a letter, never talk about me, never think about me. Please. I am completely capable of saying that. I already think it. But we have to play the game -- you know, that game God set the rules for, about keeping our mouths shut sometimes.

The specific this time is the cold burning shame-laden memory of one of the times he asked me if I was gay. I was in my mid-thirties. "Uh, no, I'm not gay." And he argued with me. Gave evidence, as he considered it. And I was too, what, taken aback? -- to answer the fool according to his folly. I don't actually remember the evidence. I listened to classical music? I read books? I didn't care about sports? Faggy stuff like that.

But later I figured it out. I was helping him coach his son, my half-brother, on a baseball team, 9- and 10-year-olds. My son, same age, was on it too. And I was fond of some of the boys, and hugged them. One in particular. Sorry, I know, creepy. But he had an older asshole brother, and I was empathetic.

That's it. That's the evidence, the real. I figured it out. So the proper question from my father, dad, should have been, "Are you a homosexual pedophile?"

And indeed, later I was a foster parent, single, to young boys. So there you go then. That's not a story I've actually told before. What do you do with that. What crime, what offense, did I commit, to earn that? Now it's stored up like a treasure in my heart, and I suppose I'll come if I'm summoned, for more and continuing weirdness yet again, and go to his funeral. Because there's no such thing as freedom. Either you sear your conscience, or it sears you.

That's what I spend my Saturdays thinking about. Almost always, it's so hard to be around people.


J

My Father

Why do I bury my serious writing here beneath all the silliness and emotionality? I start with a big argument with some imaginary person, and then get to the point. What's up with that? Hey, it's the price you pay. When I edit these things for a serious purpose, which I sometimes do, I lose the nonsense. But this blog is where I do pretty much what I want, and no one else's opinion matters, here. Deal with it. You're invited, but it's my party, and I don't have to be a good host. I've just sent a friend something that he may have a use for, and I pulled the angst out. Because that email was not about me. This is.

I don't give myself complete freedom here, because I do feel a sense of obligation. I don't do gratuitous vulgarity. Surely you must understand that I could. You've perhaps glimpsed something of the baroque nature of my thinking, and I can do it with levels of depravity that would make a sensitive person loath me. Of course I can. I would see it as a betrayal of your trust, though. And it is unnecessary. But I could.

Why do I say this? Because this is my place, but I control myself. It's my sort of public place. And so, my father.

I saw him today, as noted, for the first time since early 1995. He lives 5 miles away. He's turned into my grandfather, old grandpa H, who starved himself to death in his mid-90s. My father looks perhaps 10 years younger than his age. But he's sort of bent over now. Still lifts weights, but skinny legs. Severely arthritic and uses a walker for longer distances.

Completely unchanged, in terms of the subjects of his non-stop monologue. I don't say it that way to be unkind. It's just true. Part of it is true because he is a narcissistic personality. But we knew that. The important part of it is true because he is a desperately lonely person. The huge part of his talk is completely and utterly negative. If I responded to it, all I would be inclined to do is defend the people he is attacking, or correct the distorted impressions he has. But I knew that was useless 15 years ago, and it still is. It would just be arguing, and I don't argue. It's all said, his talk, with a manic good-humor as if it were all a really funny story, punctuated with laughter, often bitter, always big. Sort of a disconnect.

My former wife was the same way -- so much of her script was about all the bad things men had done to her. It should have been a warning to me, but I was young. It used to make me mad, how all those men had mistreated her, cheated her, done her wrong. I didn't realize that I would become just another man she would talk about in the same way. Live and learn. For my part, she was a wacky gal, and I used to tell wacky stories about her, until I clued myself in to the fact that my son didn't like my doing that. So I shut my idiot mouth up after that. Because he was more important than my using her to get laughs. See? I never have apologized to him.

So, a funny story my father told. (This is one of the things that I would normally never write. I'll keep it vague.) A brother has a new wife. My father spoke to her on the phone, and there was a communication problem. As he hung up, he said to himself, "Fucking embarrassing." She heard it. The "embarrassment" wasn't about the communication, it was about her. The husband, my brother, has cut off ties with my father. Because it was a profound insult to the wife, and it was unbelievably shaming to my brother. My father doesn't understand that, and no explanation will make him do so. There is no apology that can undo the bad feeling, because any apology would come from incomprehension, and it would lead to no change in behavior. This is one of my father's funny stories, told with much laughter.

Well, he did not stop talking from the moment I came till the moment I left. This is understandable, and I see it as my role to be the guy who listens. I always have seen that as my role. I don't say much. Hardly anything. For this, I am, of course, judged. I don't have much of a personality. I'm boring. I'm negative. And I am, but for reasons other than he would understand. It's just that everything he says is wrong. What can I do? Agree? Argue? Correct him? Please. He has not had a new idea, has not learned anything since the 1950s. And every opinion he has is absolutely right, and anyone who disagrees with him is out to get him. Tell me I'm wrong.

I did offer a bit of advice. I know better, but one slips, forgets. It's only human. My advice was wrong, of course, and he told me why it wouldn't work. It's odd. You know, I'm right a lot of the time, in this sort of situation. Strange how I've never been right with him. I've thought to point this out, but I'd just be wrong. Here's the thing though. If I'm told how I'm wrong every time I offer an opinion, it sort of shuts down any possibility for a conversation. Should I point that out? I have a strange impulse to describe someone nailing down the lid to their own coffin. He builds the box that holds him. Don't we all.

Okay, you know by now that I have a deep interest in nutrition. I'm pretty knowledgeable. Vegetarian, but not uptight about the choices other people make. Pretty balanced in my outlook. My father spent a good while instructing me about how to be healthy. Violent exercise is the key. It's all about circulating the blood, getting it to every part of the body. This is his idea. Nutrition? Diet? Doesn't matter. Exercise is the key. His diet, he informed me, consists largely of fish sticks and cranberry sauce. I am not kidding. I'm not holding him up to ridicule. He said this shortly after, or was it before, he talked about all the medications he was on, and how such and such a painkiller had caused him four years ago to lose half the blood in his body through his anus -- half, per the ER doctors. His prescribing doctor hadn't realized the meds had aspirin in it. And so on. Prostate. Arthritis. Various surgeries. He never, not once, stopped needing to clear his throat. Addicted to milk, you see. "I'm addicted to milk."

I took a chance and mentioned how I used to ache quite a bit from doing jiu jitsu -- a topic I would have liked to talk about, for all that it would surely open up questions of my being gay -- and I said that fish oil had helped in a major way. "Oh, I've used fish oil for 30 years. People used to ask me how I was so healthy and I told them about my formula, cod liver oil, yeast, vinegar and milk. I've never had a cold in my life." I'm not sure that's such a good thing, given all the phlegm. I didn't bother to say that fish oil is not the same as cod liver oil. It's not exasperation. It's not hopelessness. It's experience. Fifteen years have not improved his listening skills.

I did not bother to suggest that nutrition is important too, along with exercise, whether "violent," or merely sufficient. I did not say that circulating blood to all parts of the body is a good thing, but only because of what is in the blood. It's about more than oxygen. It's about the nutrients in blood, that cells need, and get or do not get depending on what has been eaten, consistently. I did not say this, because I don't argue. And telling my father anything contrary to what he already knows is arguing, and negative.

You are amazed sometimes at the magnitude of my egotism. My masculine beauty, my unmatched physical power, my genius IQ. Well, part of my humor is to say true things in a ridiculous way. But do I really have to point out the source of this satire? I did learn something today. I learned where my ridicule of "genius" comes from. He must have said it 8 times. "I like being around geniuses." All the various medical professionals he had contact with. Geniuses. Geniuses. They are the A plus plus students. The docs with clinics in the mall are the D students. His are geniuses. And the guy with half a tongue who does the iron work for the house -- he's a genius. And the guy who built the room under the house. And his sister's four kids, geniuses -- prosecutors and scientists. And an ex wife's uncle won the Nobel Prize in physics, and her father has a medical wing named after him at USC, and his son by that marriage had an IQ of 170. Odd how he didn't mention me. Because my little half brother Jack did not have an IQ of 170. But I did, nearly. Lot of good it's done me. Don't even get praised by my dad.

Is there hope? If so, it isn't about information, my specialty. I'm not a warm guy. I'm not a hugger. Part of me is, but that part is fiercely protected. So is there hope? I feel an inexpressible pity for him. He is consumed by regret and insane with loneliness, and I am moved beyond all power of expression by his plight. I cannot rescue him. He will use me as an object to vent his mental illness. I am not wise enough, and I am too angry and afraid, to risk any overt expression of love, love which I must possess or be utterly inhuman, but which is buried too deep to find. My mere presence, silent, mostly, will not be enough. But it is all I have to offer, and that with an intractable reluctance.

We are opposites, and we are so much alike it is breathtaking.

All I felt comfortable mentioning was my son. I've always had the feeling my father was jealous. But even he is not foolish enough to badmouth my son.

3 24 09
J

Plausibility

I always feel a little dishonest. I feel like I'm lying. When someone changes their behavior because of something I've said, it surprises me. It's like they believed me.

I take care to get my facts right. I check things out. I do research. But it feels like this isn't enough. Maybe it's that I wasn't trusted as a kid. Maybe it's that I couldn't trust. It's hard to trust now. And it's hard to believe I am trusted.

I presented my observations re my father the other night in a context of objectivity and rational amusement. Driving over there, examining myself, I felt nothing at all. Getting the call was just irritating, with a large component of simmering anger. But once I'd determined to go: the Ice Age. The same with watching their shadow play. I knew exactly how it was going to unroll. I could finish their sentences for them, except for the details. Same music, different keys, is all. Like little children. Their motives are so very obvious. As I've said, when my son was little, I could read his mind. Nowadays, I know him because I know myself.

I can't say I'm astounded at his dishonesty, my father. His blindness is old news. To hear him rant about his success and his giant brain, with details that need not be recorded here -- the palpable insecurity could fill me with profound sadness and compassion, except that I'd have to deal with how pathetic it is as well. It's not delusion. It's cowardice and dishonesty.

I'm writing this because the word plausibility demanded it. My father is highly plausible. He presents an impressive facade. Like the house he lives in.

I have a friend who has two very young sons. I interacted with them for a few minutes tonight, and it was good to do that. Kids aren't poisonous. They don't get that way, hardly ever, unless they are poisoned first. I think most people have been poisoned, but I could be wrong. Point is, my friend and I were talking about rewards, and I said that toys turn into garbage pretty quick, but hugs are always valuable. It was one of those things we say, and then it hits us how really smart it is. I had to chuckle about it. It's so true, you see. Am I that smart? I wish. At least I seem smart. It's a plausible facade. Heh heh.

One of the things I really like about myself, and that I deeply respect, and that I'm truly thankful for, is the way I treat kids. I treat them with respect. I don't talk down to them. I listen to them. I respond to what they say, or the meaningful things. Because they matter, and they have pride and vulnerability, and they will know, at a level much deeper than intellect, when they're being dealt with from a core of dishonesty and manipulation.

Am I right about this? Probably not. They're probably as blind as everyone else. They are after all so easy to fool, seduce, kidnap and destroy. But I don't care. I will treat them as if God is watching, watching how I treat his little children. I will treat them as if they matter as much, no, more, than my ego matters to me.

Not that I'm around kids much anymore. Hardly ever. It's just as well. I'm not very good at playing. It's boring. Not very good at pretending. It feels dishonest.


J

Slideshow

Put this up the first of January, two years ago. My son was deep in indian territory. Now he has been home -- well, back, for almost an entire year. That other life has passed as a wakening from a dream. Circumstances change, and we change with them. But for all that, we mustn't suppose that we wouldn't change back, if circumstances changed back. If character is a rock in the tide, personality is the sand. My point? We find what has worth, and cleave to it. Everything else is sand.

_____


My former wife was an artist. Always had a camera. If it had been left to me, there would be exactly zero pictures of my boy. As it is, there are untold millions. But I don’t have them. That’s okay with me, but it’s nice to get a photo now and then, especially given current circumstances. And he just sent me some. But you wouldn't be interested.

What’s that you say? You want to see them? Well, thanks for the interest, but... Oh, you insist? Well, it’s very flattering, but I... What’s that? You won’t take no for an answer? Really, your desperation is quite charming, and I’d hate to be rude -- it’s just that... Oh, you’d be devastated if I didn’t share them? You say life would hardly be worth living? All sweetness and beauty would flee from your soul? Only bitterness and anguish would remain? Oh alright then. You’ve talked me into it. I certainly don’t want your life to be ruined, as you so pathetically assert would be the result of my declining to share with you a few pictures of my wonderful son.

ahem

It is traditional to send out a Christmas picture.

A day at the beach?

My, that's a big one.

No wonder they hate us.

Didn't believe me, did you.

This is what we did before there was cable.

So there it is.

I find myself in an odd position. I knew that boy so well I could practically read his mind. Now my son has acquired a set of life experiences with which I have nothing to compare. He must be an utterly changed man. In many ways, he will be a stranger to me.

Of course I miss the little boy I knew so well. But my son will return to me and the opportunity in that return is that I will meet him as an equal, now -- insofar as that can ever happen between father and son. The challenge for me will be to come to know my son as a man, and as a friend.

This is no small thing. I'm not good at making friends. If we hadn't known each other for so many years, I don't know that I would be friends with my son. That's just me. There is some number of people that I like, with whom I will never be friends -- that level of trust and shared experiences and intimacies ... how could I ever have that? But I am not some other father, who must make enemies of his sons.

Yeah, that came out of left field. A couple of days ago I remembered something from my middle teen years. My father came up to me and ripped off my shirt. Tore it right off my body. Buttons went flying. He was trying to shame me, for some reason. I don't remember the details -- it happened over thirty years ago. Isn't that an odd memory? The didactic point he was attempting to drive home was that I was a weakling. But I wasn't. My hairless bare chest didn't support his premise, given that I had significant muscular development. Didn't diffuse his anger, but it undermined his point. Don't recall any more details. Except that he would have found something else to be angry about, or some other way to drive me away, as he did with all his sons.

No, I'm not actually bitter. It's an ugly and troubling story, but I don't have any emotion about it. It's just a weird memory. And it stands as a symbol of what I knew I would never be. My son always knew he could trust me. That's worth more to me than anything. Now, when he returns, I will find pleasure in his company, and I will tolerate with patience and love both the irksome habits he will have developed and the youthful arrogance he will still have -- as I will take pride in his character and his strength and his excellence.

Here I was, thinking I was doing you a favor, after you groveled and pleaded so prettily to see these pictures. But you have done me a favor. Thank you. Sharing them has made me glad. Thanks.

_____


How much of this old Jack H, or this younger one rather, remains? All of him. And his son, N? The same. The thing about being an adult is that there are no more transformations. We are finished. Almost finished. Not many things can change us. I can think of a few things, like tragedy, and grace -- but these are by definition rare. We coudn't survive a lot of either. One would destroy us, the other would so refine our spirit that we would perforce be translated out of the world. We exist only because life is mostly commonplace.

Did my predictions, or expectations, come true? Wrong question. Rather, did I know my son as well as I thought. Answer: he is a full grown man, and I know him as well as I can. I am not disappointed, save in that I don't see him as much as I might. We can't cling, though. We can't cleave, beyond a certain point. This truth causes me no pain. I must suppose I am no longer the rock, that a little boy stood on. Now I am a lighthouse in the distance. A present comfort. It is enough. It makes me smile. The way love should do.

Peace.


J

Slideshow

My former wife was an artist. Always had a camera. If it had been left to me, there would be exactly zero pictures of my boy. As it is, there are untold millions. But I don’t have them. That’s okay with me, but it’s nice to get a photo now and then, especially given current circumstances. And he just sent me some. But you wouldn't be interested.

What’s that you say? You want to see them? Well, thanks for the interest, but... Oh, you insist? Well, it’s very flattering, but I... What’s that? You won’t take no for an answer? Really, your desperation is quite charming, and I’d hate to be rude -- it’s just that... Oh, you’d be devastated if I didn’t share them? You say life would hardly be worth living? All sweetness and beauty would flee from your soul? Only bitterness and anguish would remain? Oh alright then. You’ve talked me into it. I certainly don’t want your life to be ruined, as you so pathetically assert would be the result of my declining to share with you a few pictures of my wonderful son.

ahem

It is traditional to send out a Christmas picture.

A day at the beach?

My, that's a big one.

No wonder they hate us.

Didn't believe me, did you.

This is what we did before there was cable.

So there it is.

I find myself in an odd position. I knew that boy so well I could practically read his mind. Now my son has acquired a set of life experiences with which I have nothing to compare. He must be an utterly changed man. In many ways, he will be a stranger to me.

Of course I miss the little boy I knew so well. But my son will return to me and the opportunity in that return is that I will meet him as an equal, now -- insofar as that can ever happen between father and son. The challenge for me will be to come to know my son as a man, and as a friend.

This is no small thing. I'm not good at making friends. If we hadn't known each other for so many years, I don't know that I would be friends with my son. That's just me. There is some number of people that I like, with whom I will never be friends -- that level of trust and shared experiences and intimacies ... how could I ever have that? But I am not some other father, who must make enemies of his sons.

Yeah, that came out of left field. A couple of days ago I remembered something from my middle teen years. My father came up to me and ripped off my shirt. Tore it right off my body. Buttons went flying. He was trying to shame me, for some reason. I don't remember the details -- it happened over thirty years ago. Isn't that an odd memory? The didactic point he was attempting to illustrate was that I was a weakling. But I wasn't. My hairless bare chest didn't support his premise, given that I had significant muscular development. Didn't diffuse his anger, but it undermined his point. Don't recall any more details. Except that he would have found something else to be angry about, or some other way to drive me away, as he did with all his sons.

No, I'm not actually bitter. It's an ugly and troubling story, but I don't have any emotion about it. It's just a weird memory. And it stands as a symbol of what I knew I would never be. My son always knew he could trust me. That's worth more to me than anything. Now, when he returns, I will find pleasure in his company, and I will tolerate with patience and love both the irksome habits he will have developed and the youthful arrogance he will still have -- as I will take pride in his character and his strength and his excellence.

Here I was, thinking I was doing you a favor, after you groveled and pleaded so prettily to see these pictures. But you have done me a favor. Thank you. Sharing them has made me glad. Thanks.


J