I have found my digital camera. I had buried it in a box in my house. I had purposely forgotten which one, because it had arrived to me as a present from a former friend and had had the effect of tying me to him. The camera was to remain buried until that magic wore off, at which point it would spontaneously return. Today I opened a box I have opened many other times in the intervening year, and the camera was right on top.
The charm worked and I will eventually create more, for reasons discussed in the continuing comments threads on “Anniversary” and “Nickel Bag.” I have already imagined one. The images of the others will come to me as they will.
Finding the camera was an excellent sign, and I breathed a great breath. My path looked clear – I had pulled Reeducation out by the root and my magical charm had worked, all in the space of a week or two. Of course, clearing away one piece of underbrush always leads to the discovery of another, and things come in threes. I have some comments.
ON ALCOHOLIC FAMILIES
Freed from Reeducation, I am in a position to learn at last about the nature and workings of alcoholic families. One characteristic of these is that their members do not know each other. This is because events transpire either in a chaotic and alcohol driven fog, or in a brief, calm space where everyone is very formal, and nobody wants to spoil the picture. It is not always that they are unaware of the situation and the problem. It is also that they need to rest, or to recall some positive reasons for being there.
The problem with not knowing each other is that the family is then split apart except for formal purposes, and held together primarily by the venom of dysfunction. Each person’s entropic tendency, however, is to split away to the more functional life they lead elsewhere, or to where they can lead their dysfunctional life undisturbed. That is why these families scatter. It is unfortunate for a variety of reasons, one being that they are not able to pull together in a rational manner at times when it is expected of them, or even necessary for them to do so. Floods, hurricanes, illness and death would be examples of such times.
The remedy the more authoritarian members of these families tend to have at hand and to use is an increase in the dose of dysfunction’s venom. Someone squeezes the pump, and the juice pours more heavily through the veins of everyone in the system. They are thus bound together yet more tightly in darkness. For some, it would be possible to actually meet and know each other in the light, were it not for that hand squeezing the pump. How to tourniquet, how not to receive the venom, is therefore the principal question.
ON PROMETHEUS
Reeducation did not like me because when I came to it I was already halfway through learning to tourniquet. That is another way of saying I was halfway through learning to be autonomous, or halfway through learning to refuse the venom without feeling that I was rejecting any person by this. I was also halfway through learning that it was better to be perceived as betraying someone else, than it was to betray myself.
Reeducation wanted me to be at the beginning. When it saw that I was not – that I was, in fact, further ahead than was Reeducation itself – it wanted me to be at the end, or not be at all. I did not imagine that Reeducation was not prepared to deal with any but the earliest stages. Nor did I realize that a licensed, professional entity such as Reeducation, if it were indeed in such a situation, would not admit it. This was, however, the case. We could even speculate that this was why Reeducation kept telling me I was “in denial.”
Prometheus, as we know, stole fire from the gods and was then chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus where, each day, an enormous eagle would eat out his liver. At night his liver would regenerate, and the following day the eagle would come again. Reeducation wanted to keep me in this precise position. I had claimed autonomy, and must be chained to a rock. I had discovered a wound. This must be torn anew each day and then closed up, but not explored or healed. An eagle ate my liver each day for a long time.
I have at last broken free from Reeducation’s rock. I will snatch fire again at the first opportunity, and this time I will not be caught. But the eagle feeds on venom, and smells it, and knows where to seek it out. I must still finish learning how to tourniquet.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I would be so upset if I lost my little digital camera. I’m happy you found it. By the way, hello! I hope all is well. Peace~
what a wonderful story – and i hope this finds you in a better space!
sometimes, the simple, direct and effective course of action is clouded by words which, being merely symbols, are subject to idiosyncratic interpretation. how can tourniquets be applied in such clouds?
Hi Stephen and yes – I’m fine – that’s why the camera showed up – 🙂 !
Azg – liked your post today too – and thanks – and yes, I’m in a better space, that’s why I could write it.
Charlie – You’ve made this sort of remark before (although I may be misinterpreting, pardon my defensiveness if so), and pardon me for finding it interesting coming from one who writes and publishes literature. Words and their imprecision *were* my severe problem in Reeducation. Much as I would have loved – and did hope and try – to break free by, well, just breaking free, I found this attempt futile (but spent much time trying, and not understanding why I failed) until I tried it *after* threading myself back through the forest of language. My thought on this for the moment is that men, traditionally bearers of logos, tend to be the ones who feel they have the *right* to disregard words when it is necessary. I would love to be in that position – have often tried to act as though I were in that position – have in some limited instances actually been in a position which resembled that one. More often and especially in this case, I have, like Sor Juana (a far greater intellect, and a more accomplished person than I), found it necessary to argue patriarchal words back.
Oddly, though, what you say is very close to what I often find myself thinking when I read scholarly stuff. “So many words, so much prancing, to get only to this, which we knew already, or could just see through to with our X-ray vision?” Apparently, I have X-ray vision for some things and not others. Those who lack the X-ray vision are sometimes also those who have both the patience and the interest to decipher a few things for the rest of us.
I do promise though that I have almost finished thinking about this – although I also realized today that patience on my part really is needed, since each clearing of the decks leads to new vistas. Talking too much, though, can be obfuscating, I recognize this (it was precisely the problem with Reeducation). This though is a real clearing, and I am almost to the open water (so to speak). I can smell it, feel its breeze.
I had a sad reminder yesterday of how my particular family is still bound by the dynamic you describe. Even when we are separated from the primary alcoholic, who is clutching the venom pump in a death grip, it is still so hard for some of us to know each other better. One member of my family has run far away and sees the rest of us as we were twenty years ago, and does not know or recognize the hard-won changes some of us have made which allow us to know each other better and dilute the venom.
The camera returned to you and now you will be able to share what you see! I have to figure out how to transfer pictures from my cell phone camera to my computer (not hard, just gotta read the manual) so I can send you the pictures of the five rabbits eating grass on campus that I saw on my way home today.
Joanna – I’ve got a family member like that, too. Part of it I think has to do with having constructed a hard-won identity based on not being like so-and-so. Then when so-and-so, twenty years later, turns out not to be that way any more, it is not welcomed, but felt as a threat to that very hard-won identity.
Camera, yes. I will have to actually take pictures and actually load them to the computer, though, and I am slothful. Rabbits – I love campuses with rabbits! Especially lots of rabbits, they are very funny in large groups hopping around, coming up and down from their holes.
P.S. re Charlie’s comment and words: part of why I react so strongly here is that Reeducation stole my voice and this blog was created to reclaim it. “Colonise la douleur avec ta voix” (Huidobro). The friend who inspired me to start it, liked it a great deal until he saw that it had made me strong enough to want changes in our relationship. Then he wanted it shut down, saying it had altogether too many words. 😉 I should not speak but just act – so long as my acts were acts that met his approval. I had already acted by leaving, of course, but that is already a twice-told tale.
the writing and publishing of literature is simply an adjunct of knowing how the language trick works. men, because of their traditional positions of power have been both the bearers of logos and the creators of [it] (or, more strictly, vice versa). and yes, along with their power positions comes the *right* to disregard [the logos] for it is they who give themselves that right.
i comment regularly about language. the ability to create and manipulate symbols separates us (but only just) from the rest of the animal kingdom and, usually, is taken to separate the intelligent from the dull. the limits of my language means the limits of my world, said wittgenstein or someone like him.
OK. (Edited pronouns here since logos is singular, hope you don’t mind, it was how I figured out what the referents were!) I’m not sure what you mean by “the language trick” – is there only one? – or 100% sure what you were driving at in your original comment. But it is certainly a fact that Reeducation got driven in via a lot of convoluted sentences and words which, precisely due to ambiguity / slippage in meaning, etc., I did not understand. –Z the Curious.