It was 65 degrees today. I took advantage of the warmth to go running. I’ve cut back lately, because usually when I go running in the winter I end up worrying by the end of my route that I’m going to start losing important extremities.
I had the odd sensation of either moving backwards or forwards in time. It makes sense, really, as my typical run takes me running past my old apartment, Prospect Park, and my childhood apartment building.
Last night, I dreamt that it was July of next year. I was hanging out in front of the Middle School I attended, speaking with other adults, in hte same manner that the children there do after school. I realized that it was July 21st – a date without any real significance to me – and that I had completely ignored my birthday.
I felt ashamed, also, that I had not yet started dating, despite it being July already. I felt like a loser. I felt undesirable. It reminded me of being a pre-teenager, wanting desperately to be noticed by – and to have sex with – the popular and pretty girls, but having no idea how to do anything but intimidate and freak them out.
I woke up, glad for the warning.
I’ve been dragging my feet on doing things that I have told myself I ought to do before I begin dating again. I don’t think I’ve been as curious about that impulse as I ought to. I had to drag myself into temporary abstinence. I suppose it’s not surprising that I am encountering some internal resistance in the getting out of it department.
It seems that once every month and a half or so, I burrow into myself for a few weeks, and emerge changed. If I stay underground for too long, then I suffer somehow – generally by going broke.
I lack the mental capacity to fully comprehend my own unconscious, how it works, what it wants and how it goes about getting it. I just have to assume that it knows what it’s doing.
Somehow, I made it through my history with enough of my faculties intact to do this. Many people who have endured a lot of pain in their youth simply do not make it. I’m not sure if this is genetic, dependent on their environment, dependent on personality, mental capacity, choices made in childhood or otherwise. For some people, there are no realistic chances of recovery. They are dead inside. The denial of the truth has become so ingrained as to be necessary to the continued functioning of the personality.
When I think about this and how I’ve encountered it in others, I’m reminded of a scene from a French film that I once saw. I don’t recall the title, but it was about a man who loses his identity when he is reported dead in the Napoleonic army during the 1812 invasion of Russia.
In the opening scene, the lead actor is buried under a mountain of corpses. He calls out for help, but no one listens. When he digs his way out of the freezing mass of dead flesh, no one believes his story. His wife remarries and ignores his existence. If I remember properly, he struggles to re-establish himself as a lawyer during the remainder of the movie.
When I think of the typical scarred personality, I imagine that mound of bodies. You hear a noise coming from the mass grave. You start digging through the cold corpses. It’s hard work. You feel pain and fear. As you get closer to the bottom, you feel elated – that you’re close to rescuing whomever is buried under all of the filth. However, when you get to the bottom… you find nothing but another dead body. It must have been some animal, or perhaps it was merely the sound of the wind blowing across a bottle opening.
When you struggle against the weight of your own personal history, you are trying to escape your own impending soul-death by emotional suffocation and starvation.
It’s a fearsome doom brought about by history – by your ancestors – going back literally thousands of years. The repetition compulsion reproduces life stories over and over again, until some descendant has the courage to pull themselves out of it – to climb out of their own grave to enjoy a life worth living.
It is a heroic act. It saves not only the life of the individual, but the lives of literally thousands of potential descendants. Instead of corpses to dig their way out of, these fortunate children of the future shall instead have helpful spirits to encourage them to grow – a source of inspiration and emotional nourishment.
Every act that you make in the present echoes into the future. In the case of child-rearing, this is literally true. I am sure that I was subjected to the same sort of abuse endured by some Polish child 500 years ago. In the telephone game of familial history, I am sure some sole act of brutality taken by some drunkard peasant father in my family tree echoes to the present day.
Psychological evolution largely happens through mutation – accident. A parent dies early on. Someone immigrates. It can have either salutary, negative or neutral effects.
Philosophy and psychology act as a sort of genetic engineering for the mind. I think this might be one of the reasons why both disciplines, properly applied, raise such hackles. There is a Dr. Frankenstein aspect to it all.
It is man working to change his own nature.
I was programmed for a different life than the one that I have chosen to lead.
Rather than conforming to the demands of the collective screams of my ancestors, I am building a tomb for them. It shall be a plain structure. I’ll seal it off. I’ll make no engraving. I will not mark it on any map. I shall not visit it. I see no reason to honor corpses who brought me such misery.
You carry within yourself the legacy of ancient history, of madness, brutality and – perhaps – greatness. If you want to create a better world for the future than the one of the past, then confront your own history. It is much older than you are. You are not as alone in your head as you might think.
If you do not act, they will.
1 Comment
December 16, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Thought provoking.