9:52 a.m. - 2023-08-05
il faut cultiver notre jardin
I suppose I have to write about the thing.
And I don't really want to write about the thing. Not that it isn't appropriate, and not that impropriety has ever stopped me. It's just that it sets the thing into motion, when you write about it...
And as much as I dread it, that might be the best-case scenario. Because what if the thing remains motionless once evoked? Moribund...would it be a relief? A weight off my shoulders and a signal to move on? Would I mourn with dignity or in disgust as it vanished in memory's rear-view mirror? Amputated or exorcised? Dissipated or outgrown...
If however, as I (timorously) expect, it stirs...if acknowledgment and a written confession prove to be the de-fib paddles that jolt it bolt-upright and hungry again, back from the verge; I'll have no one but my selfish self to blame. Not “selfish” in the sense that I'm denying anyone something rightfully shared--selfish in more insular terms. Because me and the thing struggle in a vacuum now.
This same notional paring of scope applies to its twin demands: self-discipline and personal-accountability. Hurdles, both.
Were you to find me in your employ you might think otherwise re: the former...I accomplish my work now with a quiet efficiency born of experience; and compensated in my youth with brut physicality and long hours. This isn't and wasn't true self-discipline though, only a reflection of my upbringing. Raised by a military officer and a football-coach grandfather who grew up during the Depression, my “Protestant work ethic” was instilled early-on. And though surrounded by well-educated family who would go on to find professional success, generations of struggle still informed our working-class mindset. Strength of character and a strong back went hand-in-hand. In retrospect, I'm not sure this ethos did me any favors.
Regardless: the self-discipline needed to sustain the thing is another prospect altogether. Loosed from the yoke of extrinsic expectation, I'll find myself standing alone, holding the whip...tasked with driving myself across acreage gone long fallow. For this where it must start.
(Remember the collapsed bookcase from four months ago? Its remains still remain. Piled where they fell, untouched and gathering dust as an experienced cabinetmaker walks past daily.*)
As for personal accountability? That gets more complicated. I was schooled on the subject under three sensei, each with a different approach: Tahireh kept a mental list of my shortcomings, my moments of weakness, and my deep-seeded insecurities (confided or telegraphed)...all of which which she'd cite like a KGB dossier later, in whiplash moments of anger. Angela could cry while articulating an irrefutably damning personal truth and throwing a shoe (on-target) from across the room. Pidge shouldered the burden of disappointment with a silent determination that gutted me more than the open conflicts had; stacking twice-again that wretched weight on my own slouchy shoulders. Did I figure it all out then, finally? Personal accountability?
Well..you can't matriculate from a campus you've fled, unfortunately.
So the following decade played out like a dissolute montage of self-excuses. The most half-assed (and telling) of which was that “I'd learned not to make promises I couldn't keep”. A fallacious conceit in context--you can't claim you're taking personal accountability by avoiding all commitment. But I did, and given how isolated I've become now, any progress made on that front might prove hard to quantify.
Counterintuitively though, given its/our selfish demands, it's on this very front that I staking my hope vis-à-vis the thing. The hope that, by tending to my own garden, the world beyond begins to bear fruit.
So I'll probably write about it. I'll have to find a way to approach it obliquely, of course, as is my wont. But something needs to move towards resolution...it torments me now like a hanging sneeze, the thing.
*I fear I may have “monumentalized” this debris pile via metaphorical association w/a failed relationship in a previous entry. Because while personal-accountability has proved elusive, self-pity remains an old friend who I can't seem to shake...
