Monday, December 9, 2013

Love and Other Wrong Reasons: Foreword

I've begun a project. Though this is called a "foreword," it is sort of a project scope. Like too many project scopes, it has started out expansive and will be fine-tuned, trimmed, and sculpted as the end result comes into focus. This is also a free range to exercise muscles that have fallen into disuse. I'm likely to get a little lost, but that is one of the benefits of making this kind of space for myself. So here goes the first breadcrumb, I hope I can find it on my way back.

...

    This project is a meditation on bad decisions, mine and others', that may or may not be rooted in love. Like any literary project, I suppose there is a strong possibility I will unearth my own shortcomings. This may even be a means of overcoming them. I am in the midst of a standoff with myself around romance, decision-making, and what I actually want for myself. Some of the writing here will touch on that. Most of it will not. Hopefully all of it is engaging and interesting.
    We'll see about that.
    I have a persistent obsession with Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." This story defined much of my aspirational writing style for years. It is wildly different from my more recent obsessions, but marks a zenith of handling an everpresent topic in a fresh, mature, and challenging way. Each year provides a new lens through which I can read the story, glean lessons, and be taken aback. I do not want to populate this manuscript with mediocre imitations of that piece. Just as "What We Talk About" comes from a deeply insightful, mature, and reflective place, I want to assume a similar posture towards my own experience, my present situattion, and my writing.
    In a similar mode, I want these stories to examine recurring motifs that trouble or challenge me. "Why I Hate White Boys" is my attempt at taking a critical stance on a whole body of media that places entitled white teenagers as if they were sympathetic tragic heroes. I do this in part to identify my own position or even displace it in a system of privilege and oppression. The title comes from my immediate reaction to these characters in media and not from any deep-seated condemnation. Like much of the work here, it is written and hopefully read in a spirit of playful critique.
    This playful critique is a foolish position. The Fool represents impulse, creativity, and idealistic matters--amongst other things. In the traditional depiction of the Fool, he is a clad in bright green and off on an adventure, oblivious that he is about step off the edge. Meanwhile, his faithful canine companion is tugging fervently at the leg of his trousers to keep him safely eathbound. If the Fool is so idealistic, perhaps he is the faithful man in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade who is willing to trust that Providence will guide his step to divine safety in search of the Holy Grail. Or maybe the Fool is willing to explore not the air itself, but the mysteries of what has not been explored. The dog, so faithful and true, wants to remain on the solid, the known, the material. It is impossible for the dog to go where he has not already been. Then again, he is at least safe.
    I want to let myself make mistakes again. Not just the mistakes of indifference or laziness or distraction, which are all common enough, but the mistakes of staying safe. In "A Bench in Fiddler's Green," I take on one of my most defining experiences as a young adult and romantic person. The memories I associate with this story are sometimes comforting and warm but more often foggy, confusing, and profoundly strange. These memories may be read as the companion regularly tugging me back to safety when I should be leaping forward, onto an adventure that may reward with years or even decades of support, affection, and care.
    Selfishly, these pieces may help uproot the barriers that these hound dog memories maintain. I have been blessed by the care and affection and even--Dare I say?--love of wonderful women. Presumption is its own foolishness, but presumption is also necessary for the closeness needed in love. In love we consider we may actually know what another person thinks and feels. We presume to understand some parallel universe of experience, perception, interpretation, and sensation. I think that I have set aside that presumption with the excuse of respect and the private expectation of some sort of emotional stability.
    All of that is far too serious. The airiness of foolishness means taking a different and especially comedic look at things. As Charlie Chaplin put it, "Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot." The foolish position allows us to see the comedy--or the tragicomedy when needed--in the tragedy. Someone I used to know (a phrase borrowed from Elliott Smith) once described me as a tragic figure. It was high school and we had dated and she was a theatrical type of person. When she dropped me off at home, she came around the car and attacked me with kicks and wild punches. The self-awareness and peculiarity of the day--including a beautiful Midwest fall day at the park--provided almost immediate distance from the event and I was able to laugh about it within days. I actually sort of deserved a hard slap or swift punch or two for what had happened, but the mad fumbling aggression queerly mirrored the mad fumbling of our relationship as a whole.
    I hope that I am not a tragic figure. They always die at the end or lose their friends and lovers. I want this effort to divorce me from whatever tragic figure she thought I was. I want it to divorce me from the hard memories that weigh at my feet. I don't know if I would settle for a comedic figure, but at least they get to get hitched at the end.
    This work is about love being one of "all the wrong reasons." I posed this question in conjunction with the 70's catchphrase, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." I think of this phrase often when some hetero-female friend of mine is going through one romantic crisis or another, knowing that it also reflects on me and my social position. The other quote buzzing in my head has been Zsa Zsa Gabor's: "Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do." Unfortunately, I didn't know any catchy images to go along with it.
    I am part of some sort of demographic group that sees romantic love as the gravitational center around which we are supposed to define our lives. Mostly, we see this as a feminine attribute--like little girls wearing pillow cases for veils as they rehearse the Big Day--, but I reassure you that there is a corollary amongst men. I also find myself at that age when more and more familiar faces are adorned with formal wear, rings, and little cherubic faces. If we--this generation, demographic, or some other categorical grouping--are making these decisions because we think love is so definitive, what happens when that gets force gets disrupted by some rogue planet or even a rare eclipse of that loving, weighty luminosity?
    I have seen bad relationships persist because of love. I have seen good relationships dissolve despite love. I can see the breakdown of good relationships, of loving relationships not because love isn't there, but because love simply isn't the satisfactory salve for the wounds two people might inflict on one another. It is one reason, sometimes the right reason and sometimes the wrong reason, for making decisions. This is an attempt to better understand the latter. In the end, I may even understand the former a little bit.

2 comments:

  1. Your reflection, though a bit rambling, is filled with so many good insights. I, too, and a big fan of the Carver story, "What We Talk about When We Talk about Love." I love Carver's work in general, though I've only read about ten short stories. He was a tortured genius, no doubt.
    I also like your take on the fool. Of course I think of Don Quixote when the fool is mentioned, and though he was of course being lampooned, we still need fools and dreamers, which are sometimes one and the same.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tom,
      Thank you for the comments! What I'm posting are all very rough first drafts. They are rambling, but they are also a chance to get my thoughts out. Some of this comes out of questions I posted on my Facebook and in response to some friends' comments.

      Delete