I am a convention not alike, to be sure, the child who died too soon who might, like his parent, have known his parents so well as to be able to articulate their pain from as near as can be imagined rather than from the more traditional vantage of the external critic.
Why cannot you, my parents and parents' parents, simply pause? One begins, of a day, in the doldrums of a declivity from which, until it has run its course, there is little escape. Perhaps the sky is grey or the weather is a mirror of the memories which cloud today and make the presence of other people inclement. The other begins, as is often the case, full of weighty personal affairs and wanting the time and space for full and uninterrupted consideration thereof, so unusual in any life not lived in leisure. One caught in the undertow of an intimate overcast, the other abstracted by concerns, create the perfect environment for discord, the habits of which lie beneath the surface of everything awaiting but the slimmest suggestion to emerge gale force.
Especially on those days, why take offense at slightest slight and cradle it instead of me? Why hold to your breast indignation at the daily fare of misconstruals and petty disregard which often loving people visit upon each other? Why not object simply and expect and offer humility and apology or, failing that, call cruelty what it is to its face and sail the raging seas with honor and craft? Why cannot you both simply stop when you feel the tide of mutual disregard rising to become a wave? Why devolve, for neither of you lacks consciousness of the approach, into recriminations, cold, disappointed resolves, the chess of veiled threats and machinations, wounded thrusts, and bathetic contests of will woven into flimsy subtexts of petitions for redress of grievances?
Like all my brother and sister conventions I am dead, or will be as this fiction ends. I barely lived, except to make the heart more tender for the breaking that exposes the truth of brevity and the need for compassion. Whether my body is dead, or just my spirit, having learned in tender years to expect cruelty where intimacy is greatest, the honor due me should be sufficient to summon sufficient shame to diminish at least your willingness to chew upon one another as though for the nourishment you lacked, once upon a time. A spouse is no more a decent substitute for anything for being near at hand. But act not pricked by shame. Be moved by the great hunger for kindness beneath your offended dignity and petitions for justice. You were children too and learned these lessons from your parents. Do not visit them on each other for the succor of your malingering habits and the teaching of the children coming after you. Life is too precious. Be free.
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Why cannot you, my parents and parents' parents, simply pause? One begins, of a day, in the doldrums of a declivity from which, until it has run its course, there is little escape. Perhaps the sky is grey or the weather is a mirror of the memories which cloud today and make the presence of other people inclement. The other begins, as is often the case, full of weighty personal affairs and wanting the time and space for full and uninterrupted consideration thereof, so unusual in any life not lived in leisure. One caught in the undertow of an intimate overcast, the other abstracted by concerns, create the perfect environment for discord, the habits of which lie beneath the surface of everything awaiting but the slimmest suggestion to emerge gale force.
Especially on those days, why take offense at slightest slight and cradle it instead of me? Why hold to your breast indignation at the daily fare of misconstruals and petty disregard which often loving people visit upon each other? Why not object simply and expect and offer humility and apology or, failing that, call cruelty what it is to its face and sail the raging seas with honor and craft? Why cannot you both simply stop when you feel the tide of mutual disregard rising to become a wave? Why devolve, for neither of you lacks consciousness of the approach, into recriminations, cold, disappointed resolves, the chess of veiled threats and machinations, wounded thrusts, and bathetic contests of will woven into flimsy subtexts of petitions for redress of grievances?
Like all my brother and sister conventions I am dead, or will be as this fiction ends. I barely lived, except to make the heart more tender for the breaking that exposes the truth of brevity and the need for compassion. Whether my body is dead, or just my spirit, having learned in tender years to expect cruelty where intimacy is greatest, the honor due me should be sufficient to summon sufficient shame to diminish at least your willingness to chew upon one another as though for the nourishment you lacked, once upon a time. A spouse is no more a decent substitute for anything for being near at hand. But act not pricked by shame. Be moved by the great hunger for kindness beneath your offended dignity and petitions for justice. You were children too and learned these lessons from your parents. Do not visit them on each other for the succor of your malingering habits and the teaching of the children coming after you. Life is too precious. Be free.
- Merton Stigler
June 1907
| posted by Unknown @ 6/16/2007 02:42:00 PMJune 1907
