Under the colors the real phantom events pass on, visible and invisible , rigid and fluid , passing and eternal. The son seed this early , but the father beats it out of him so as to prevent him from becoming a dreamer or a poet
I encourage my son to be a dreamer–musician, artist, poet. Genetics doesn’t seem to hold him back. He has strong genes from his mother’s side of the family. Given my own often Saturnine temperament, I can only encourage him to dream.
Since my parents death, I have noticed myself become less patient, more cynical and angrier with life.
You are fortunate to be able to be altruistic. Most fathers are constricted with pre-existing classical conditioning from the sin of their fathers, raising their sons as they father had done to them.
Some are even possessively, jealously, hold their offspring down, while they are trying to live within their own purgatory.
They were never given a chance, they would loose the esteem of their progeny.
But it’s fairly typical, I know a guy, a friend of mine, who I have lost track of a while back, with similar concerns, he gave the shirt off his back to his daughter, who like her mom was conniving and inscrutable, she went through college manga cum laude, became an attorney-nurse, then to boot got a Ph.D. In public health, and now teaches at a prestigious college.
Whenever the three of them get together, mom, dad, and daughter, the disdain is obvious, and some little trinkets of derogatory subtle crease formed in that sweet-child -meaning, pops you do not measure up.
Mom has gone through several men since, and goes to town, but she has a fragility like the daughter, a weak spot, for which any man would travel through the underground for.
The other friends, husbands and lovers are stored like briquettes in a dark and damp place.
Well thinking, the guy must be out of the shop, or something, got to talk, here and there, and found his despair is within deep caverns worse, below the 7th hell, and found that, the only redemption in the Wagnerian sense still available to him, is to give, give, give, even that which has weighed him down at the brink of the fiery hole, all his life.
In fact the two gals, he told me once while sipping on absinthe, were his only redemption, the Maximus minimum of taking the very last breaths continually, between bouts of panicke ridden yogic attempts to self rescuciate.
Now, he said, 'I am relieved when one of the other male friends show up, cause, I see then she lightens up, happy again, chatty, as when she was the little girl he married. It’s worth it to see that on her face, the venomous vanity a long ago phantom of the past.
It could have been a boy, he says, but then, things would have been a lot more difficult, every bit harder,yes, yes, yes.
I tell him you could have salvaged him, in any case, gathering all the supposed insight you could have, should have had.
Meanwhile him and her are chatting away like some skylarks, he obviously inflicting poisoned words into it, meant for him, such as, ’ when will you call 911, glancing at him, as if his token effort to pretend that such self reference was not meant for him, but Oh, such false supplication, as he drew his hands together in a gesture of praying to his higher powers.
She could have been a boy, he lips end poy instead, for half his teeth were missing, he could have been.
He could have been that golden boy, the one who loved me most.
Now he is gone, got drunk one damned God foresaken night, got drunk, hit a tree.
And they chatted through the night, he pretending not to listen in, as their words got harsher, louder,
and a little more desperate.
See, he was telling her, there is always a way out, even insanity has a function, a charm in life.
The son, made into his image, has to go through treacherous Hayward, and byways, before he can get through the straight and narrow, of this damned rocky road.
He could not measure up to his older sis, she was brainy and cutting, his male ego was fractured, early, and when he saw dear old dad almost made it, but could not , when he realized the price of the pitiful journey can only be a solitary one, he panicked. But good old dad was preoccupied, trying still to reach the light at the end of the tunnel, to heed a need.
The muse never came then, and even now this need to script only eating at his entrails, not even for gross consumption, but well knowing it must lead him out of the vapid freezing maze, not unlike the maze in The Shining, but the haunt was different in kind, consisting in a failure not to re-press.
I haven’t seen my friend, my only friend for many years, now, and though tried to trace his whereabouts, even hiring a private detective, developed the feeling he was on the run.
He is free though, and his running, maybe not real, but caused by an inward journey through successive and gradual detachment and good will.
Sometimes, hoping the Muse will return for him, as he knew IT will, and against all odds, even at the cost of giving up all treasures, as He who was promised all, and declined. But if that is all that takes, to forgoe the glitter , then be it, only to pursue a hidden God, a silence to be heard only in the depths of the deepest fountain of betrayal.
You are a lucky man, Irrellus, lucky indeed.
Emotional bonds are like finely woven strains of Golden Fleece, fragile, ,brittle like angel’s hair on a long ago fern, hiding the many many colors which oh so gently hid all the night terrors up ahead.
Indeed, Ierrellus is a fortunate man.
Irrellus, you may be thinking, what does he know of my travails, I would like to clear it up: I see You lucky specifically to be supportive and inspiring to him with your Muse.
The last thing of support my friend was able to give to his son, was an edition of ‘Lonely Traveler’. Thereafter he took off, on a very unpredictable and unforeseen tangent.
One Liner, Thanks for confirming my feelings about Irrellus.
Ierrellus is an inspirational individual and so confirmation is effortless.
And perhaps, are You, who picked up on it.
Not sure I agree with that but thanks for putting it out there.
Before arriving, my son had to spend years doing my vices. I just pray that he’s over that for good. I wasn’t the best example as a father. I have two daughters who prefer not to know me.
Habits of mind and heart are incredibly hard to change but the inspirational person is the one who struggles to change (not the person who has already changed).
I believe my son has come to believe that the sins of the fathers are something to overcome.
I have two daughters. One is trans; the other thinks trans is a sin. Sticking up for the former, I lost the latter. But the former sees only wealth as proof of success. So, I lost her, too.
All those who come after us suffer the consequences of our shortcomings (sins) more than we do but they also experience the benefits of our virtues more than we do.
One can hope so.
Now how does one figure out in an overall debt ,whether sin can be apportioned? For surely, the father has a portion, then his father a portion, amd then the father’s fathers father, and down the line toward even the very beginning. If it’s figured this way, would not the debt of the latest father be minimal and forgivably insignificant?
I am glad I inherited the debts and credits of my mother and father as they have given me something to work on and something to work with.
This type of effect, that you are describing of merely having just enough baggage to enable you to give you impetus to get things going is within normal limits of having to deal with them
But what to do when it starts to snowball and take off on its own accord? What if the baggage , the debt appears to become an unforgiving debt, where you actually have to be able to pray for the sins of omission/commission of others?
Usually when others have made the distinction anamolous?
You work on any given situation with what you have (you cannot work on it with what you don’t have).