I am too careless. I don’t really fit here. It is not that I am not athletic. I do all right when I am paying attention. I was okay at tennis. I played football in high school, but only because my Dad insisted that I do one season of team sport. I have a mean pong pong serve and this means the more subtle motor skills match up with intensity. So it is not that. But. I am also just terrible at fixing things of any complexity, have to hire all that sort of thing done. I hire it done with gratitude there are people to hire. I can’t pay attention long enough. I tend to spill when I eat. I can’t seem to break that, really don’t want to. So much of the physical stuff of this planet is just not what I want to pay attention to. I have a head that actually thinks it can kill my body and still survive. It wants to. It’s not that I am not erotic in the largest sense either. I know that works out for me. Still, I don’t want to attend to the world that much. I grit my teeth most days at least once, saying the traffic or the whatever is not worth it.
It is the normal everyday stuff. It is the shopping. I don’t go to shows because I hate the parking hassle. I like the shows. Every time I go I have the same reaction. The show was worth my time. The parking hassle wasn’t. Portland is not bad either. I will do without stuff easier than I put up with the hassles. It is just like that for me.
I break things like relationships in part because I never want to do anything, because I hate the hassles. Pretty sad.
(INTERMISSION)
So here is how this happens. I get done writing this and immediately (as I am late) go to an AA meeting where they decide to talk about expectations. I get to rant and poke fun at myself and my defiant attitudes. I’m all better now. Heh.
The Antique Vase
The vase finally
shattered. I was too careless
for you, I know this,
as if I broke you,
not the pottery, as if
I meant to do it,
as if it was an
ancient Greek treasure instead
of the garage sale
derelict we bought.
April 2, 2009 3:19 PM
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It's funny, the energy we attach to things....and to people. And to shattering....xxxx
ReplyDeleteLiked this. I have had the same attitudes from time to time. Wife labels them my being a boring old man. I haven't decided at those times if I'm being lazy or just selfish enjoying just living in my mind.
ReplyDeleteOh god, Christopher, I see a great deal of myself there in your prologue. I'll take it as a precautionary tale...the relationship bit especially. I want to heal, not break others. And I realize that sometimes the result doesn't have one thing at all to do with the desire. As they say, shit happens.
ReplyDeletexo
erin
Anthony, life is inclusive. There are overlays of meaning. The mind's logic is a mapping device, not a true copy. Thus what is apparently paradoxical often is simply life accepting many pictures all at the same time. You can be a boring old man to some and an entertainment to others all at the same time. You can have altruistic and self serving motives backing the same action. You can experience joy and grief simultaneously.
ReplyDelete{{{Erin}}} Practice, practice, practice.
Seconding what Michelle said... so much gets invested in things. Makes me think of that scene from American Beauty with the beer and the couch. :)
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ReplyDeleteMy fear of “success and familiar” what ever that is, and who made THAT rule anyway, has me bumping the antique vase. Self sabotage maybe. This is interesting to me always. Glad you have brought this up with a poem that speaks very well.
ReplyDeleteB&H, I have all my life felt like I deliberately held myself back. I am not sure it is true, but when I was young I lived with expressions of maternal high expectation coupled with occasional no holds barred brilliance on my part. I never really felt in control of it however. The world always felt far too dangerous (and in high school it actually was) for such naked self expression.
ReplyDeleteWhat I have learned since, through the experiences of alcoholism and recovery, I may not have held myself back at all, but have done the best I could in all circumstances, with the burdens of "fantasy" laid on me as well, some of them not mine but family and society as well. I claim many potentials that may never have been real.