Of Thanksgivings and Of Turkeys

Yes, once again in the air. But this time I can’t really tell which is the louder, the noise of the jet engine or the snorting of the snorer behind me. I know, I know, there is no way to control snoring when one is already asleep, but somehow the noise of the snorer enters my space uninvited and offensively. It pisses me off, actually.

Headed to a Home for the Holidays Thanksgiving. It’s a conflicted visit with some anticipated reunions and some unwelcome events.

Dylan says, “Everybody’s moving, if they ain’t already there, everybody’s got to move somewhere.” There is some truth to his statement: even Thoreau kept heading off on expeditions and adventures—I think his term for his occupation was to be a purveyor of huckleberries. But lately, I have traveled too, too far, and have lost my bearings. I don’t seem to be able to settle--the writing moves along, but in fits and starts—like the traveling. Getting up and sitting down, everybody moving, if they ain’t already there. Or am I just restless myself, and incapable at this time to sit with the writing for any extended period of time.

Reading Wayne Booth’s autobiography, My Many Selves: The Quest for a Plausible Harmony. I respect that title--that is what an autobiography might be—and at least he acknowledges the original and often conflicting split; and the writing of the autobiography as an attempt to create a “plausible” harmony--one that makes sense. Of course, it assumes that a harmony that can be created has a reality. But finally, the harmony is only a fiction. I wonder what it is that sees the self without rents and cracks, and assumes a harmony. Or perhaps the adjective ‘plausible’ acknowledges the conflicts and asserts the singular Self as creative fabrication.

The concept of leaking assumes serious cracks and rents; indeed, a sense of health depends on them. If there were no egress the whole would explode.

Returning to family returns me to unacknowledged—repressed—pasts with no opportunity or companionship to study them. All these feelings and attitudes erupt like Vesuvius, and like Vesuvius, these feelings and memories freeze and smother the present. I think this was in Adam Phillips: as long as memories stay buried, they do not change—but then, behaviors built on them don’t change either. Perseveration. Compulsive obsessions. Reenactments with no consciousness of the original act.

Once they are unearthed, however, these memories begin to decay, and then, they are, if not inaccurate, then certainly unreliable, and so what hope for self-awareness and insight.

In the air (sigh!) on return. Daughter One remained behind. It is hard to leave a child behind because I leave a not insignificant apart of myself behind as well. That is, when I leave the daughter behind, I give up the role of her father as it exists when she we are contiguous, and now I have to reinvent myself without her. Yes, I miss her, but I guess I miss me, too. I seems to me at times that life is a constant process of reinvention, achieved with more and less difficulty and success. One of the advantages of consistency is that the necessity for reinvention is minimized--every day I go to the same office, teach the same students in the same classroom the same materials as I worked with last semester.