Jack London wrote 20 hours a day.
I'm lucky if I write one hour a day. To write, to call myself a writer, and
truly attempt to pen a publishable work, I need to dig myself a hole: A place
where I could put everything else on hold, and devote my money and time to the
pursuit. If I could invest in myself, in the life of a writer, I'd find a tidy
place to live in Oakland and spend my days sitting in a cubicle at the Mills
College library, staring out at the Creek. That would be my office, my place to
work to fill the hole, each day. Quiet and serene, I could watch the trees and
the rain and put words to paper without thought of family or obligation.
If you love something deeply
enough, or are passionate about it to the Nth extreme, digging a hole would be
the only way to fully commit to your calling. Is it even possible to write a
book without that passion? To work on it here and there, squeezed in around life’s
chaos? If I truly believe in this project, to write about my experiences in
medicine and spirit, don't I need to commit myself and stop coasting through
sick and not-so-sick days?
Living as I do write (sic) now, I
feel passionate about nothing. Am I numb to my own desires? No I know they are sitting
patiently somewhere in my gut. To feel the drive to write – or to needlepoint
or sing – would open the door to allow all the mother anger crap to come to the
surface. No wonder I sit at home and can't think or feel or create: My inner
security guard locks the doors (or more likely disguises them beyond
recognition) so I sit and spin mental wheels in stale futility. Most likely I
will not be free to feel or write diagnostically until I'm free of my mother
and her condo.
Alas, there's the caveat: To be free
of the condo requires money, which requires a full-time job. To work at a job
all day cancels in totality the possibility of hole creation. And so once
again, I stand in my father's shoes, working at a job that does nothing for me
but supply health insurance and a paycheck. “Do you like your job?” Is a
question I cannot honestly answer, for I know what my soul wants. See how Little
Miss Practical overrules even intellectual desires.
If we were truly an empathic species,
we'd create places where people with creative dreams and talents could work
without worry of money or shelter. We believe in art as a food or medicine for
the soul, without which every individual would suffer. In a writer's
work would be equivalent to any other person's efforts – regardless of field of
expertise – and we'd all believe in the collective's ability to barter and
compensate.
In this pickled condition my life
resides, my dreams are quashed along with hope and thought; in the cold
dysfunctional air of my mother's condo, I'm stymied beyond all ability to
think. Can I unravel the overly-taut web of repressed rage Mom lives in, just
enough to create a space where I can exist in positive energy? Her hatred and resentments
permeate every piece of furniture, every room, and every door. So I feel the
anger and then live in it, my psyche’s development nurtured in a hopeless and
infertile environment.
I do not want to be my Mother, to
live angry, breathe and eat angry every day, to be so mad at the world that I
stay home to spite it, convincing myself that I have control, and in hurting
the World back by depriving it (them) of my presence. This is self-deception,
for is factually the opposite.
My Grandmother Alice created such
a space for herself, year after year pulling the walls in around her and
refusing to forget those who wounded her. She would go for days without talking
to anyone, living her specific, controlled routine, going to bed every night
craving company to the point of heartbreak. When one reaches a place where one
has nothing but one's anger, life is hollow and cold. Pride becomes an
unconscious dagger in the soul. I must not end my days like that! Waiting for
the Pain Inflictors to awaken and say," Sorry! You were right. We were
wrong." They never will. If I live the second half of my life with feet
dug in and arms crossed, I will have wasted existence. How horrible it would be
to die, knowing that what I crave, recovery, is completely unobtainable!
All the endless pain and abuse
from childhood cannot be understood by a child; children see in black and white
without any ability to extrapolate meaning. My core personality, as my Grandmother's
and my Mother’s, is waiting to be free. My Mother will die before she gives in to
the bastards, and is determined to be the last “man” standing. She will show
the patriarchy that they are wrong about women – all women, regardless of the
cost to her soul.
And so I carry the millennia-old
anger of my sex, standing tall for my generation and for women to come. My
anger and rage at society is a long, long relay, where a mother passes the baton
of anti-patriarchy to her daughter. With each handoff the phrase, “Don don't
let the bastards win!” is shouted. Yet there must be a way to wage this relay
of spirit without running angry. For if I'm angry at all men there is no way I
can find love in a meaningful relationship with one of them. No man wants to bed
a runner for in the end we never stay put.
Now I must ask how to continue
running without the potent Gatorade called anger. It drives and fills every
cell in my body with unending energy a strong, unlimited, and useful shield
against all the world's wounders. To not end up alone and livid in a one
bedroom Social Security supplemented apartment I need to change my focus on
food sources.
The problem becomes a common one: I have lived so long this
way, I know no other way to be. To return to the happy and vibrant person I was
before I first felt sexual discrimination I must imagine a time without it, a
place where I don't need anger to keep me standing and functional or even alive.
No one will respect my pursuit, in the long run, if all I have left is anger.
For when angry, we are always on the defensive, never creating, always
distracting – or deconstructing as evidenced by the Civil Rights Movement.
Malcolm X came from a place of anger and revolt, Martin Luther King Jr. one of
confident hope. However, both said we must tear down the current society to
build up a new one. Anger must be supplanted by wisdom and quiet courage.
The years of angrily burning bras and forcing walls to crumble
are behind us. Today, women – I – must build wholly-owned societal components on
foundations of trust and equity, for the “Way of the Peaceful Warrior” is the
hardest but longest enduring. To rage against the machine is futility at its
most heartbreaking.
Lawana Blackwell said it best: “The
hatred you’re carrying is a live coal in your heart – far more damaging to
yourself than to them.”
Amen, sister. Amen.
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