YOU DON'T KNOW, I DON'T KNOW

19 of #100daychallenge

A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH OTHER

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

— William Stafford, The Darkness Around Us Is Deep, Harper Perennial, New York, 1993

It is easy enough, and perhaps the cast of mind of those more in the pessimistic rather than optimistic school, to focus on the shitty events, rather than the successes. Maybe that is because whatever comfort comes from those successes can be so easily upset by the crappier parts of things. There's some Roland Barthes ... Umberto Eco? thing about how one small a part of something that may be anomalous to that thing can stand for the whole ... does that make any sense. Not quite metanomy but not entirely unrelated either.

Life with the neighbor has escalated unpleasantly. Turns out those folks are over-trained on the blame-thrower to the degree that they cannot hear another side of a story. No surprise there, right? Except for hippie central here. I just don't have the heart to recount it all. Blame-throwers often get the advantage due to firepower and putting one on the defensive immediately. Plus, there are three of them and just me. Janet came out to provide some moral if not verbal or practical support.

Let me assure you I am not without culpability in the whole miasma. But these are folks with whom blame-sharing is a non-starter. My favorite part is them accusing me of aggression, (fair enough in this case) but not recognizing it themselves at all. Not giving an inch. Complete lecturing and blaming. And, of course, after I respectfully listen and contemplate their comments, they do not reciprocate. Repeatedly interrupting me when I try to share my point of view. Rejecting it before it is out of my mouth. I am lousy at war. I need one of my tougher sisters-in-law to take them on.

I am surprised that I did not take the "fuck off" road, which would be the second time in recent weeks that was my internal response to, if not unfair and outlandish criticism, was at least bloated and misplaced. It's been a festival of aggression, passive and not-so-much.

In other news, though, there are new glasses for Sally Anne AND Janet. She has not had a new pair in decades and was kind of resigned to just not seeing. I had broken my last good pair and had been getting by on scuffed and scratched older ones. I can see much more easily now with prescription reading glasses and distance glasses for every day.

I know I have posted that Stafford poem so many times that y'all have it memorized. Yet I find so much to be true and salient. As I mentioned about, so much of my neighbor problems have to do with cultural differences and the forced intimacy of neighborliness. We don't want to know one another. We have nothing in common, save for some shared space. I know that she has her worries, being a divorced mom struggling to keep her house and house-proud to boot. She wants control. Janet and I don't care too much about that, me less than Janet. 

The front yard has been a construction, furniture-ditching, and gardening project for almost a year now. I don't really care because I always think of things as being in process for a long, long time. But she does care. And because she cares, I began today to move the furniture projects to the back, to sweep up some of the tree detritus and all. And I will continue to do so. Not because she has frightened me and might call the city, but because she cares and that is reason enough for me.

In the meantime, I have to figure out how to afford a fence around the yard. I wanted one anyway just to increase privacy, and I have heard that good fences make good neighbors although I think she is against it and has no money to contribute.

I might continue to muse, but I am going to try to go to yoga in the morning, bad knee be damned. That is a go-go to-to sentence there.

Fox thinks he is a dog, sleeping at my feet.