OleopteneA blog for Mara Collins

Reclamation Song

October 7th, 2008

I don’t know how to even start this particular post. I hate suggesting that more than one or two people even follow the blog closely enough to notice my absence lately, and worse, honesty compells me not to pretend like not blogging is not an admittedly perverse cry (or not a cry, but maybe a very soft whimper?) for attention (did I put in enough negatives there to make it tricky to parse?) or to fail to acknowledge that getting messages asking if I am okay is just a little gratifying, (even as I am horror-stricken at the idea of inflicting worry on anyone) and at the same time I think being unable to publicly write, specifically, being unable to write about myself, comes from being a little sick of myself, a fear of blogging and social networking being deeply narcissistic, reinforcing self-absorption. There are other factors, of course. The household has been a little disrupted by Raven’s big moment, which wasn’t mine to write about, and has meant all sorts of disruption of routines that have left me busy trying to be celebratory and supportive, but also trying to keep things normal-ish for the kids.

I am okay, it turns out. Not blogging has somehow translated into morning pages that are filled with what I need to write, the insights I need to get back to myself — which actual feelings are masquerading as other feelings, and how I had gotten out of touch with the powers I actually have and started feeling powerless. But there’s still the awkwardness of moving, in my head, at least, from not blogging, back to blogging.

Jenny, resorting to reading the ancient archives in the absence of new blog posts, noticed that the blog started not long after I started morning pages (and Aodán was six! which means that for nearly half his life, my life has been organized around finding time to write — moreover, it’s been there for nearly the whole of Søren and Rainer’s lives). It isn’t a coincidence (I mean about the morning pages, not so much about the kids). I think that as important as it is to have an uncensored, unfiltered place where I write until I know what I am thinking and feeling, which would probably be too tedious for another person to endure, it’s as important to me to put ideas out to be tested and responded to, to have a reality check, to not let a private journal be the primary relationship in my life.

Jenny also kindly points out that the blogging is a way to connect, a widening circle and not the black hole it had felt like. Even as I cringe re-reading what I have written, wondering if I make too big a deal of my own not writing for ten days, die admitting that I like attention, feel absolutely graceless that this should be so about ME, wondering what right I have to go on about myself so, my brain makes up a fable of the kettle and the pot finally getting past name-calling and forming a support group of two. I am trying to write honestly about what I go through, not because the I experiencing it is so important, but because I believe that the recognitions and resonances we experience are sacred. That they are confirmations that we can be sunlight to each other, penetrating the labyrinths of self-consciousness that some of us are prone to wondering in blindly, that we can shatter each other’s loneliness only by being honest.

I get seduced into believing that it is easier to conquer my own needs than to acknowledge and communicate them. More, I am a terrible judge of what I need. I tend to bounce between of extremes of “the only things we really need are food and water and air” and, like a four year old who has just discovered the power of the word, whining “But I NEEEEED it!” about everything I want. I try to figure out what qualifies as a (valid) need by guessing from what I can see of the exterior lives of others, cultural expectations and norms, and the reading of prescriptive self-help-y books of which I am otherwise quite skeptical. Lately I devour readings and TED talks on positive psychology, behavioral economics, anthropology, philosophy that hint at there being some science of a “best way to live.” When maybe what I am really looking for is a science of being Mara; that instead of being hung up on defining needs, I could be a bit empirical, what are my objectives, and what conditions are most conducive to those objectives. And that sounds perhaps terribly elementary, but compared to the knots I have tied myself into about the gaps between what I apparently am feeling and what I should be feeling, elementary is okay.

Oh, I want to end this not on me, but with something transcendent and beautiful, sunlight on leaves ornamented with raindrops, the right song for the afternoon for me (Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, as a matter of fact).

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