Tag: Denial

Neuropathy

Rita Sommers-Flanagan1 Comment

Photo copied from random internet search

The cold hands of March are not easily forced into the welcoming shape of April. March is in denial about her advancing neuropathy, made worse by the chemicals of decay around her. She pretends to be warm and comfortable, but she’s not.

With a pointed glance, the God of the Floral Sofa tries to shame me for dust, crumbs, and smears of yogurt. “No!” I glare and turn up the music. Thanks to a blogger managing Opal’s Farm in Texas, I recently discovered James McMurtry. I don’t love country music, but an old cowboy dressed in drag to protest the absurdities of the small-minded, hard-hearted Neanderthals among us is worth a listen.

The Beloveds on Okinawa gather each year to pray for peace and health. On Easter Sunday in 1945, a battle began there that would end three months later with 200,000 people dead.

“How many enemies? How many friends?” God asks.

“That’s a false distinction,” I snap.

“Yes. But remember, you’re a false distinction,” God laughs. “And so am I.”

I gather my blankets and beer and sink into the Dark Place. False distinctions parade by in cosmic drag: Life/Death. Love/Hate. Evil/Good. Black/White/Red/Yellow. The air is thick with unexpressed longings. I can’t breathe. Hunger smolders from the sunken eyes of nursing mothers. My own well-fed eyes sting like crazy, but I can’t seem to cry.

Without being requested to do so, my phone organizes my photos into artificial themes so banal I am appalled. The shallow joy, the uncritical eye—these uninvited invasions attempt to pacify and define my little life. But I resist. “Isn’t that your job, God?” I sneer. “Define and pacify my little life.”

“Yes. Absolutely,” Floral Sofa nods. “But no.”

I am terrified by the erosion of compassion around me. Neuropathy of the soul, caused by willfully telling or believing lies, is epidemic.

The ship of which I am captain has sailed. I’m floating over a sea of faces that, like the Mona Lisa, have been artistically blurred, thus removing the sharp lines most of us need to recognize ourselves. We are rendered ambivalent. Our feet flop when we walk, and falls are more frequent. “Take heart, Little Life,” Floral Sofa whispers. “It is in the falling that you find salvation.”

“That’s not the way I want to be saved,” I answer angrily.

“Oh, but I think it is,” the Sofa says. “Either way, I’ll be around.”

I sip my beer, pull my blankets tighter, and plan my elaborate but futile escape.

That Lonesome Valley

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

One of the harder things about human consciousness is the realization that we are mortal. No one knows exactly how to handle this, but as the generations ahead of us decline and pass, we bear witness, one way or another. Some claim that the last task entrusted to sentient beings is to die well.

My own mom was a fighter. Even though beset by serious medical limitations, she renewed her realtor license in her eightieth year. My dad died when Mom was thirty-nine. She was utterly shattered. She arranged for immediate family to be seated in the back pew at the funeral, and afterwards, she never set foot in the church again. She was done with that version of God, and who can blame her?

“Not me!!” God interjects. “No blame here.”

Even though she unchurched herself, Mom held a steadfast belief that when she died, she would meet my dad in heaven and give him a full account of how she held on to the ranch and finished raising the kids.

I glance at God, sad, proud, and a little embarrassed at the childlike simplicity of her assumptions.

“No worries,” God says gently. “Even if that’s not exactly how things work, I appreciate the ways humans create myths and rituals to find strength and resolve. Your mom’s resilience was epic.”

“Yeah. But remember how she felt about mirrors and getting old? She hated the reflection of her aging face. Really hated it. And it was tough for me, too. I could see what was coming, not only for her, but eventually for me.”

“Oh, I remember,” God nods. “But I’ve noticed you don’t hide from mirrors. In fact, you seem drawn to them.”

“Maybe,” I laugh. “Morbid curiosity.” I lean into my antique trifold mirror, pull my skin back toward my ears, make a goofy face, and add, “Mirrors prove that I’m still here.”

My grin fades as I continue to stare. “But God, I see the etching of the years, I see what my children see, and it breaks my heart. I wish I could protect them.”

“I know. But you can’t. Love isn’t always about protection or denial. Love tells the truth and then offers to help,” God says, as the room floods with mirrors. Every wall is now reflective.

“Like what you’re doing right now?” I ask. “Is this love?”  

I fight the urge to close my eyes and cover my face. Instead, I square my shoulders and press my palm against the cold glass. From deep within, the ancient eyes of God twinkle, and God’s palm meets mine. The glass warms.

Partying with God

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

“Hey, God,” I whisper, slipping quietly down the dimly-lit stairs. God’s an early riser, but others are still asleep. “Wanna party?” Sometimes, my morning mood is both desolate and overly energized. I don’t even know why I say what I say.

“You bet,” God answers with enthusiasm. “You mean like eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die?”

Exactly, I think to myself. I want a reassuring party with my adoring little God: a fatalistic precursor, debauchery-laced denial.

My eyes slowly adjust to the sunrise out the window. The pasture glistens far beyond a describable green. Turkeys have been eating the tops off my onion sets, and chokecherries are budding. Spring is arriving with her usual expectations, but each winter leaves another indelible mark on my psyche.

Inviting God to party is risky, but not inviting God is risky too. This one will cost me a bottle of beer, some lime-flavored chips, and the kind of scrutiny only fools and children are willing to endure. But right now, I am an unswaddled child. I’ll be fine, I tell myself.

“No, you won’t,” God says in a million joyful voices. “You won’t be fine. You are fine. There’s a difference. C’mon. Let’s get this party on the road.”  God is legion. They are many. They are beautiful. I don’t have enough beer. And even if the chips expand like the loaves and fishes, they’re stale.

“Ah, never mind,” I say. “Let’s skip the party. I need to go shopping and pull some weeds. I need to put things away, do the floors, make some calls.”

“But you invited us,” God protests. “We’re coming along, no matter how you spend your time. And we brought plenty of refreshments. You didn’t think we’d show up empty-handed, did you?”

I have endured scorn, exalted in adoration, sought invisibility, reveled in mastery, and played by myself on any number of shorelines and precipices. What possessed me to issue that rash invitation? A party with God at dawn? I might be an unswaddled child in my mind, but in reality, these stairs are a real challenge.

I sit on the bottom step, cover my ears, close my eyes, and will God to disappear. Instead, she scales down to singular and sits beside me in superhero pajamas. She hands me coffee. I hand her the day. She turns it this way and that, gazes at its beauty, touches its pain, and hands it back.

“All yours,” she says. “Enjoy.”

“I’ll try,” I say as I put the day in my pocket. And I mean it.            

“I know you will,” she says. And she means it, too.

On Being Mean and Hateful

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

“God, why is being mean so damn gratifying and easy?” I asked from the depths of a very bad mood.

“Because you’re angry,” God answered. “Anger is like a heat-sensing missile. It scans for a target. Once zeroed in, it feels good to release that toxin and blow things up.”

I chewed my thumbnail and said nothing. Questions came to mind, but I didn’t want a sermon. God can be so redundant. Blah blah blah, forgiveness. Blah blah blah, compassion. Blah blah blah, self-sacrifice. It gets old. Aren’t we built for survival? Aren’t we meant for greater things than washing windows, vacuuming, hauling other people’s garbage, and groveling? Why are there winners? Losers? Why is war seductive? Entertaining?

“Don’t answer!” I yelled as God opened his mouth. He closed it and softened into a smiling grandmother with shining black skin, plaited silver hair, and big white teeth. I watched her Mona Lisa smile warily, and my eyes narrowed to slits. “Get away from me,” I said.

She dipped her head and softened into her younger self, supple and innocent. I glared and declared, “I don’t know you.” She bowed her head and softened into a little boy with a baseball mitt and a dream. I shook my head menacingly and frowned at his wistful face. His eyes held mine as he softened into a naked baby kicking in the sunlight that poured through my unwashed windows.

This helplessness sickened me. Complete and utter vulnerability, displayed without a shred of pride or self-consciousness; arms waving, legs kicking, holy drool slipping down the sides of those fat cheeks, landing where new planets will someday emerge, perfectly round.

I backed away. “Don’t make me see, God. Don’t make me old or poor or weak,” I begged, staring down at the infant. “I want to play nice in Eden with very pretty people. I want to be fully understood and adored just as I am. If you’re God, you love me, right? So you can do this. I need a shortcut. A yellow brick road. A red carpet.”

The baby hardened and cracked into fragments of granite, jasper, onyx, and light. The earth beneath my feet was no longer firm. Yoga instructors always say to notice the earth supporting me, but it had become shifting sand. I covered my nose and mouth and dropped to my knees. “Ah, fuck,” I muttered. “I don’t want to deal with myself.”

“You surprise me,” God said from the pile of broken stone. “I thought you were tougher than that.”

“Like I have a choice,” I said, as I turned my face toward the voice.

“Exactly,” God said. “Like you have a choice.”

Cookies

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This morning, I stumbled into a nest of words that swarmed up like wasps and stung me. Disown, disavow, defy, dissent. Renounce, repudiate, reject, rebuff, refute, rebut. Deny. None of these words can ward off a root canal or undo a pregnancy. Even spoken together, they can’t change the meaning or length of any given life. They cannot change what is true. But they can do damage.

“Correct,” God said. She’d stopped by for coffee on her way to the city where these words are far more dangerous. “It’s tempting to deny rather than deal with things. Easier to disown than own up. But where’d you be without dissent when the tanks are at full throttle? Or refute when what is spoken is not true?”

Memories of Tiananmen Square…dissenting bodies flattened into dark stains of blood and flesh. Fast forward, flash back. Locations and causes vary, but it doesn’t end. People as pawns, people as predators. People fleeing or fighting back. People against people.

God turned the radio down and ate another cookie. “I’m not surprised that humans are a migratory species,” she said, rather randomly.

I thought about this for a minute. “Yeah, but it doesn’t seem voluntary,” I said. “People migrate because of disaster, violence, hunger…and they aren’t often well-received.” I pictured people jailed, children caged, battles, conquests, claims, displacements, paperless people pushed back or enslaved. I could see thick walls adorned with razor-sharp metal built to stem the flow of hope that comes disguised as desperation. Migration seemed even more dangerous than dissent.

“Sure,” God said. “Forced migration can be brutal. But humans also just explore. They get bored. They reach higher, dive deeper, and widen the circle. And sometimes, the stranger is welcomed with real hospitality. I like that.”

God’s placid mood slowly drained the toxins from my swollen oppositionalities. Or it could have been the beer. Or the turkeys pacing the fence. Or maybe the return of the Canadian geese, paired and gliding through the snowy sky. Whatever the source, I found the wherewithal to smile.

“I like that, too,” I said, and remembering my manners, I added, “I’m glad you stopped by. Thanks.”

“De nada,” God said. She put a cookie in her pocket. “One for the road.”

“Take more,” I said, pushing the blue plate towards her. “Take as many as you’d like.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” God said. She helped herself to every last cookie. Our eyes met. She grinned. I could see cookie crumbs caught in her teeth. Cookie crumbs on her jacket. Bits of cookie falling from her grasp, turning into a sea of cookies, mountains of cookies, a sky of cookies. A planet of fresh-baked cookies.

“How did you ever get involved with a God like that?” I asked myself as she and her cookie-filled fists faded. I shook my head, but to be honest, I have no regrets. Occasional terror, but no regrets.