i have no rhyme, nor reason, for such an absence. except that...
sometime, one just feels stifled, silenced, by life and everything in it. things just got too...busy all of a sudden, too overwhelming. i couldn't write about what i wanted to write about, what was really bubbling around in my soul, so....i couldn't write about anything. i lost my voice.
i lost some passion for analytically looking at place as a concept, and instead just sit around daydreaming about being in a different place (running away: always a viable option). i lost some passion for thinking about economics and how it interacts with society at large, and instead just concentrate on surviving my program of study, in the most inelegant and brute way imaginable. the last few months, all my energy has been focused inwards, trying to figure out the future trajectory of my life, and what it all means.
i guess sometimes this just happens. you could call it a mid-life thing, i don't know. seems strange to think about a mid-life crisis when you're still a college student, but hey, perhaps these things know no bounds.
tomorrow i'm headed out, with my mother, to visit my grandfather. i think he won't last much longer. he's 92, so in some sense, he's lived a full and completely adequate life. yet i will mourn his passing greatly. not because i have ever been close to him or felt supported by him, in any way. i'll mourn the passing from this world of his specific experience. sometimes i feel like he's the only person left who could explain to me my father's family - why they imploded so spectacularly, why they chose self-destruction over life. he's the last one left, you see - everyone else is dead.
but he would never talk anyway. he can't express whatever it is he feels. i know that. still, while he's alive, i had hope deep down that someday, we'd sit with a recorder between us, and i'd ask him all the questions that lie deep inside me, and he would provide all the answers, and the dark shadows that hovered over my father while he was alive would make sense, and finally i'd see where my sorrows and my person fit into the grand scheme of things...
daydreams. it's april. life is all about nonsense. sunburns and raincoats all in the same day. twas brillig, and the slithy toves...did gyre and gimbel in the wabe; all mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe.
perhaps in the future things will make more sense.
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Sometimes life finds a way to shut us all down at some point. This is very well said. You've captured the emotions and frustrations of feeling stifled so vividly. You will find a way through this patch and though you may not find all of the answers you're looking for, a spark will return. Be well.
ReplyDeleteChris
Mindy this is one of the most extraordinary pieces of writing I've ever read. You describe exactly where I've been for the past year, and am finally coming into the light, feet on the ground I choose. so to speak. As to your grandfather, I see and feel you as perfectly as is possible without actually being you. you are so amazingly one of a kind.
ReplyDeleteand you'll be writing your book when?
with love, toves slithy, and gyles and gimbles in the wabe. always, claud xoxoxoxo
chris, claud, thanks so much. i was so nervous about posting this one and you guys have totally validated the universality of such feelings.
ReplyDeletei don't feel so alone suddenly!
xoxo
I never got that time with my fathers family either--to ask what the hell happened. They also imploded, and my generation really seems to have left behind whatever happened there (although I do fear that it's waiting like a time bomb in my genes, or my children). I did visit distant relatives in Norway that had pictures of my grandparents, father, aunts and uncles that I had never seen. It was such an odd experience to see them through these eyes on the other side of the world, who only received certain kinds of news and still held on to them as family.
ReplyDeleteMy grandma on my father's side broke her neck a year or two before she died. She recovered from it fantastically, for an 80 year old woman. She was tough. When we visited her in the hospital after her broken neck, she was dried out, weepy, facing mortality, and said she was sorry to us for...well, everything I guess. All my sister and I could say was "it's ok" and kiss her head. And although I will never really know what happened to that side of my family, maybe that's all I need. I hope so, because it's probably all I'm going to get.
I hope you at least get that. Or something that puts it to rest for you.
christy, this is fascinating. we must talk more sometime. especially about the time bomb fear...and what do we tell our kids, too? i don't tell them much...are we maybe the generation that breaks it?
ReplyDeleteEncore, Encore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAND
Author, Author!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thanks claud :)
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