In a modification of the old Clinton era philosophy in regard to gay people in the military, I’m operating on the philosophy, don’t ask and so nobody will tell.
I’m trying to keep my nose out of her town except where I need to in order to write my column.
If I talk to someone, I don’t ask about her, and so, that part of life has become a blind alley. I know very little at this moment about what transpires with her in town hall, and I’m not pursuing it.
If someone volunteers information, I listen to it, but fortunately, she has not come up in any recent conversations – and that alone says something about how little important a role she plays. I can imagine (without evidence to support this) she must be very frustrated, like being caught in a stopped elevator, unable to go up or down or even escape the circumstances – she must wait things out to see if a new opportunity emerges.
Her poetry, however, provides a glimpse of her personal life (if there is ever a separation between her public and private) and from what I can gather, she’s really in a mess.
Much of this comes out of her need to protect her own identity while seeking to become part of a relationship, the fatal flaw she outlined in a poem a few weeks ago, and yet, from her last poem, she appears to be still desperately hungry for love, willing to reinvent her wanton self in order to return to a state of purity or innocence.
But the fundamental issues remain. She cannot really be part of a “couple,” if not because of her wanton ways, but because she will never surrender true self, never accept that necessary loss of personal identity a couple requires.
As she seemed to indicate from her poem from 2003 and the old lady she met on the cruise, she has always hated that elite who gets pampered and led to the head of a line, and yet, when she got the opportunity (with the help of advise from the old lady), she sought to take her place in the “in-crowd” This perhaps because ever since childhood, she was always on the outside looking in. She clearly dislikes that view and does her best to become one of the insiders whenever she gets into a new power group – but again, her current position may seem like she’s made it, she knows down deep, she hasn’t.
She is not going to let herself be consumed by a relationship when she clearly has a destiny to fulfill, a treasure waiting for her at the pyramids, and if she has to sell tea in crystal glasses or tend sheep or do any other menial task, she will get to her destination, but without the baggage associated with love.
She wants love and doesn’t want it at the same time. She is seen as the liberated aunt in the family, who has yet to and most likely never will conform to the usual family standards, admired by the younger people in her family, pitied by the elders who believe in their hearts that all people must settle down eventually, including her.
It is something she rejects, and yet, as we see from these poems, she longs for.
She wants to be the other half, part of the couple, but without sacrificing her aspirations. But at wanton times, when she is most lonely, when she is hungry for affection, she surrenders – if only a little, and for only a short time.
Eventually, she comes to realize that a relationship is a trap from which there is almost no escape.
So, she seems to settle for temporary arrangements, some convenient to obtaining the next rung in her ladder to success, others mere “working things out” affairs, trading a bit of physical contact in the pretense that it could be love.
But this last poem (as well as those leading up to it) shows how vulnerable she is to the seductions of love, and how she continues to search for some alternative that would allow her to love without feeling like a caged animal. And yet, it is clear, her new faith is a temporary faith as well, even if she can’t yet see it. She is grasping at straws when she seeks a return to the previous innocent bliss. As more than one great thinker has pointed out, you can never go back, or re-invent Eden. The fallen always remain fallen, and we all must live with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment