I hate poverty. It offends me.
I think about this when taking walks with Ryu, reading the news, talking to people. It ruins people. Poverty covers everything it touches in a flammable residue. Poverty is combustible. It ruins lives. Tears apart families. It creates, and exacerbates, social unrest. Poverty touches most aspects of this family that merit attention. The ‘big’ news of our shared story. Divorce, abuse, education, mental health, addiction, alienation. These things sprung out from or took root in poverty.
I fucking hate poverty.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Family matters
I looked for the happiest, most optimistic picture: I found Pikachu, on a snowman, watching the sunrise/set.
My writing output nosedives to ‘zero’ during a school semester. Lots of stuff happened since September. That is surprising, right? I know. Right now the time is 9p. The goal is to write until 10p. 10p means bedtime. Ryu lays to my left, curled up and snoring. Cute dog.
The family. The disappointment. The family is disappointing. Why in hell am I the one with an ounce of sense? Feeling lonely isn’t anything new. Feeling alienated, though; that ship is new to the harbour. I mean --- fuck, Derrick transformed a mildly awkward Thanksgiving into a whirlpool of violence, alcohol, and betrayal. He profoundly disappoints me. The one family member, in this state, that I actually respect is now another notch in the column of people best avoided. People get to choose the way in which they organise the conditions of their lives. Native intelligence plus ethics plus sacrifice. What the hell am I trying to write? I’m disappointed. More to the point, betrayed. Derrick behaved in a way that I believed possible but felt so unlikely as to be impossible. Oops. Bad bet. No, bad him. Fuck him.
I refuse to be anyone’s hero. Shayla has two parents. They hold responsibility to provide for her. Not me. I resent the call to.... The situation with my niece sucks. Dealing with her means managing her two identities. She believes herself an adult. She makes adult decisions. She was 12 years old in October 2010. Now, she is Janus. She lives (trapped?) in the net of her parents’ combined choices. That makes her a victim to circumstances beyond her control. I see in her a similar attitude of those attention-whores on any “reality” show. Maybe that’s the sad thing. Maybe the root of my disappointment in Derrick lies farther in the past than this recent Thanksgiving. He didn’t act the parent. Nor, in fairness, it seems did Shayla’s mother. Shayla described her mother using terms of friendship, similarity. Where were the rules, the boundaries, any sense of proportion? Originally, for some years, I openly disliked Shayla for her offensive attitude. The casual, flippant manner in which she disrespects adults (including her family). She wasn’t welcome in my house for a year. Back then, the feeling I had for her was disappointment; what I felt towards Derrick bordered on anger. How could he allow his daughter to become a callous creature? To write off her behaviour as puberty would mistake the problem from the symptoms. She reminded me of a sociopath: an unsettling lack of empathy, open contempt towards those that love her, and an infuriating narcissism. It seems that I’m piling on here. What I mean though is that the people responsible to check these retarded patterns of development dropped the goddamn ball. In hindsight, I wonder whether Derrick and Kristen even played the same fucking game. Their thirteen-year old daughter makes adult-grade decisions and, now what she’s gone unchecked, nobody can now put that cat back into its bag. Shayla isn’t stupid. She recognises her own agency: to act on her own authority, because her willpower exceeds both parents’ combined. Shayla is a product of her parents’ choices and, for the past few years, her own choices. All three get to live with the consequences. As for me... well, no. No no no. I hate this. She deserves a reliable adult. More to the point, she deserves to be a child. I resent like hell that her parents deprived her of the structures necessary for innocence. Instead, they indulged her. The feared her. I do neither. Because I’m awesome, apparently? It’s unseemly for me to render judgment on parenting. Still, I’m not an idiot. I -- anybody -- can see this disaster taking place. I hear this: “gee, Don has his head on straight. Don made a good life for himself.” Let’s not listen to a fucking word Don says. Great plan. Let the chips fall. I don’t gamble.
Maybe, when asked, I’ll claim to be an only child whose parents died in the 1980s. The world raised me. Common fucking sense raised me.
I didn’t call dad throughout the Christmas break; nor Connie. My arrogance took charge. It remains. I wanted to avoid any conversation about Derrick, Mom, or Shayla. I don’t want them to dominate my conversations. The people I know in Holland are pretty awesome. I look forward to talking with the folks at Lemonjellos and the office. The Spanish-language group. The cliché that we cannot choose or family may possibly be false. Maybe I cannot choose against shared genetics but I can choose which relationships to cultivate. And prune. The definition of family changes. The condition of those relationships we choose better reflect our selves. The better cliché is that we cannot change our family. True. We can change our friendships. Those are the connections which offer better clarity at understanding. With whom I choose to spend time, grow a friendship, enter into romantic affairs, etc. Maybe I’m investing too much mental energy into last year’s events involving Derrick, Mom and Shayla. I live out here; they, out there. Neither of the three exerts a meaningful influence on daily living, daily decisions, daily joys. Let them live within the conditions of their choosing. Let me live within the conditions of my choices. Let them choose not to live life; destructions. I choose life. I choose Ryu.
My writing output nosedives to ‘zero’ during a school semester. Lots of stuff happened since September. That is surprising, right? I know. Right now the time is 9p. The goal is to write until 10p. 10p means bedtime. Ryu lays to my left, curled up and snoring. Cute dog.
The family. The disappointment. The family is disappointing. Why in hell am I the one with an ounce of sense? Feeling lonely isn’t anything new. Feeling alienated, though; that ship is new to the harbour. I mean --- fuck, Derrick transformed a mildly awkward Thanksgiving into a whirlpool of violence, alcohol, and betrayal. He profoundly disappoints me. The one family member, in this state, that I actually respect is now another notch in the column of people best avoided. People get to choose the way in which they organise the conditions of their lives. Native intelligence plus ethics plus sacrifice. What the hell am I trying to write? I’m disappointed. More to the point, betrayed. Derrick behaved in a way that I believed possible but felt so unlikely as to be impossible. Oops. Bad bet. No, bad him. Fuck him.
I refuse to be anyone’s hero. Shayla has two parents. They hold responsibility to provide for her. Not me. I resent the call to.... The situation with my niece sucks. Dealing with her means managing her two identities. She believes herself an adult. She makes adult decisions. She was 12 years old in October 2010. Now, she is Janus. She lives (trapped?) in the net of her parents’ combined choices. That makes her a victim to circumstances beyond her control. I see in her a similar attitude of those attention-whores on any “reality” show. Maybe that’s the sad thing. Maybe the root of my disappointment in Derrick lies farther in the past than this recent Thanksgiving. He didn’t act the parent. Nor, in fairness, it seems did Shayla’s mother. Shayla described her mother using terms of friendship, similarity. Where were the rules, the boundaries, any sense of proportion? Originally, for some years, I openly disliked Shayla for her offensive attitude. The casual, flippant manner in which she disrespects adults (including her family). She wasn’t welcome in my house for a year. Back then, the feeling I had for her was disappointment; what I felt towards Derrick bordered on anger. How could he allow his daughter to become a callous creature? To write off her behaviour as puberty would mistake the problem from the symptoms. She reminded me of a sociopath: an unsettling lack of empathy, open contempt towards those that love her, and an infuriating narcissism. It seems that I’m piling on here. What I mean though is that the people responsible to check these retarded patterns of development dropped the goddamn ball. In hindsight, I wonder whether Derrick and Kristen even played the same fucking game. Their thirteen-year old daughter makes adult-grade decisions and, now what she’s gone unchecked, nobody can now put that cat back into its bag. Shayla isn’t stupid. She recognises her own agency: to act on her own authority, because her willpower exceeds both parents’ combined. Shayla is a product of her parents’ choices and, for the past few years, her own choices. All three get to live with the consequences. As for me... well, no. No no no. I hate this. She deserves a reliable adult. More to the point, she deserves to be a child. I resent like hell that her parents deprived her of the structures necessary for innocence. Instead, they indulged her. The feared her. I do neither. Because I’m awesome, apparently? It’s unseemly for me to render judgment on parenting. Still, I’m not an idiot. I -- anybody -- can see this disaster taking place. I hear this: “gee, Don has his head on straight. Don made a good life for himself.” Let’s not listen to a fucking word Don says. Great plan. Let the chips fall. I don’t gamble.
Maybe, when asked, I’ll claim to be an only child whose parents died in the 1980s. The world raised me. Common fucking sense raised me.
I didn’t call dad throughout the Christmas break; nor Connie. My arrogance took charge. It remains. I wanted to avoid any conversation about Derrick, Mom, or Shayla. I don’t want them to dominate my conversations. The people I know in Holland are pretty awesome. I look forward to talking with the folks at Lemonjellos and the office. The Spanish-language group. The cliché that we cannot choose or family may possibly be false. Maybe I cannot choose against shared genetics but I can choose which relationships to cultivate. And prune. The definition of family changes. The condition of those relationships we choose better reflect our selves. The better cliché is that we cannot change our family. True. We can change our friendships. Those are the connections which offer better clarity at understanding. With whom I choose to spend time, grow a friendship, enter into romantic affairs, etc. Maybe I’m investing too much mental energy into last year’s events involving Derrick, Mom and Shayla. I live out here; they, out there. Neither of the three exerts a meaningful influence on daily living, daily decisions, daily joys. Let them live within the conditions of their choosing. Let me live within the conditions of my choices. Let them choose not to live life; destructions. I choose life. I choose Ryu.
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