coldhearted scientist وداد

MURO NORTE: LOS HURACANES

I was a member of a couple which would have separated sooner, but stayed together longer for practical reasons. The most important of these was to provide housing for my evacuated family at the time of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This family is still angry with me because I did not have more to give than I did, and because I would not relinquish my entire house or work space to them.

A relative elsewhere continues to suggest I might be more “understanding” of this family, although I gave everything I could without seriously damaging my ability to do my job and although I am now the one who reaches out to them and they do not look back. This person also suggests I could be more impressed with the difficulties of their current situation, wherein one of them, a medical resident, is working over eighty hours a week.

What people in general do not realize is that the hurricanes, of which there were two, affected large parts of the state in addition to New Orleans, that there is a great difference between New Orleanians who lost houses and jobs and those who did not, that we are still in the hell of hurricane aftermath here.

It is not that I do not understand the stress my relatives were under, but that I saw and see the stress everyone was and is under, and the reasons for it. The situation is far too broad and grave to fit the plot of, say, a bourgeois soap opera – although several could certainly be written with the hurricanes as a background.

MURO ESTE: HEROES Y MARTIRES

Some of the more famous statements by my New Orleans relatives, who had lost neither life, limb, pet, paycheck, nor house, were “Helping hurricane victims will not help my career” (this from a doctor), and “We are enjoying telling people we are evacuees and seeing how much stuff we can get for free in this town” (this from her husband). Many other people were having really serious problems and the rest of us – also hurricane affected, although not displaced – were seriously pitching in.

My aforementioned relative elsewhere does not believe they made such statements and has suggested I “made them up” out of malice. I do not have that kind of malice in me, or any motivation for it. I am also very uncomfortable still being as angry as I am at these people, or as hurt as I still feel by them, and I do not want a feud. However I do not think they are heroes or martyrs and I do not appreciate being asked to see them as such. The analogy which came to mind this morning was violent: the experience of dealing with them, and then being criticized for noticing their hurtful behavior, was like being raped and then put on trial for not having enjoyed it.

I do not how fair the analogy is but my relatives’ behavior here felt violent and violating, and they were among the very most fortunate of all the displaced. When I am asked to participate in admiration of supposed heroism on their part, or lamentation of their putative martyrdom, it feels to me as though the whole thing were happening again.

MURO SUR: LA EDAD DE PIEDRA

There are historical reasons for all of this which long predate the hurricanes and which are, I do believe, beyond my control. There always seemed to be something I needed to atone for with the New Orleans part of the family. The most problematic were things I could not change, like having finished my degree, or opinions I was only imagined to hold.

I strongly suspect that I am so often considered “unfair” in this family not because I am but because I see things and point them out. Things which do not make sense to me and which I cannot believe make sense to others. Things my relative elsewhere claims I “make up” – out of malice, I suppose – or that I “dream.” (“That never happened, you dreamed it” was an oft-spoken sentence in our house.) I also suspect that some people are considered “fair-minded” only because they conform, and that I am “unfair” because I am too independent for a woman. And of course I wish the entire dynamic in this family were different, but then I have always wished that.

And I note that I am more upset at my relative elsewhere than at my former New Orleans relatives. The doctor can be pitied, and her husband forgiven, although I am not willing to place myself in an abject position with them again. I am angry with my relative elsewhere for stirring coals I would far prefer to let cool. In a subterranean way this dispute involves – not him, but an image of him, and I think it could be resolved more easily if that image were allowed to fade, to disentangle itself from the knot. And this relative has always said that rather than request better behavior from people, I should “grow a thicker skin.” I do not want one of those, the thin skin is what allows me to acquire languages and systems, and to see otherness, but I may need to create a better Diaphanous Screen.

SER ALGUIEN: EXCURSUS ON THE CREATION OF DIAPHANOUS SCREENS

How do you create a diaphanous screen, anyway? First of all, it is important to consider that these are not the defensive screens of self-righteousness. Those screens are solipsistic shields. They interdict communication and stifle growth. These screens are diaphanous.

An important ingredient in the creation of such a screen is the consideration that your world is as valid as any other, and that you can grant yourself your world even if others would not grant it to you. You must draw a circle around your life, meditate from that space, augment your own power in it, and reduce the power of others there. To accomplish this reduction, it helps to realize that they are where they are. You may want to speak to them, but it is more pleasant to enjoy their odd foreignness as such than it is to feel obliged to take it on.

In the spirit of taking people where they are and as they come, I should perhaps not be so surprised at the attitude of my relative elsewhere. I might feel less pain, for example, if I remembered that this is hardly the first time this relative shows me his stressful side. That he suffers from his own form of self-hatred, and may also extend this to his blood. And the doctor, after all, did not directly use any of our family money, or her own family’s for her education. This is important to him and he often points out how admirable it is.

I say to that, of course, that we all benefited from white, middle class privilege; that my relative elsewhere, just like the doctor’s parent, had said he could not or would not pay for college; that if our aunt had not paid for school we would have applied for scholarships and loans just like the doctor, so that it is all more or less the same in the end; that I paid for most of my graduate education myself, whereas it is my understanding that my aunt paid for a large part of my relative elsewhere’s; that the doctor’s cohabitation and marriage kept her expenses down; that this vain competition over who spent the least of whose savings is pointless in any case; and that the people who are really “doing it all on their own” as our aunt had wished us not to have to do are my students, who are not on scholarships to good private schools but need-based grants to this decent, if not inspired state school, and who risk their future health nights, weekends, and vacations by working in chemical plants and oilfields.

And the family money not used for our education was destined to my relative elsewhere. What we spent, he could not, and the funds were administered by a bank we dealt with directly, and the shadow of our aunt’s now invisible, but still powerful hand lay on him. And I think these disputes over money are actually struggles over personhood, and autonomy, and love. And the maintenance of a proper diaphanous screen requires remembering that while you may be flawed, you are not guilty.

SER, Y SER DE OTRO: EXCURSUS ON ORGANIZATION MEN

“Be perfectly oppressed, but also be perfectly successful and original, and yet not in such a way as to take too much time for yourself or challenge our views,” said the instruction booklet which came with my straitjacket. This is why I sometimes envy the apparent confidence of organization men, relaxed because they have backing and easy respect. They are doing the bidding of others, but they do not mind; they lead standardized lives, but they like them. And they are allowed to think the occasional original thought, should it so please them. Individuation, it appears, is either easily won for them, or optional.

For me, on the other hand, it has always been a question of navigating between the Scylla of perfect originality and the Charybdis of perfect oppression. That strait is no stable middle ground. “Individuate or drown!” is perhaps the deeper message. Although individuation sounds scarier than does the constant navigation of that rocky strait, I think it may be easier. The only difficult moment is right before that first step. But as with writing, fifteen deep breaths will carry you safely in.

MURO OESTE: EL YO Y LA ESCRITURA

I am in virtually the same academic field as my relative elsewhere because in our family this was the field through which you could attain personhood. I needed personhood, and the field, I hardly mind. It is quite interesting, and a great part of my own self also lies in it. However, I did not make tenure the first time I went up because the book contract I had at the time would have had required me to engage this relative’s work in a way he would not have liked. That would have been for purely objective, intellectual reasons but still I could not bring myself to do it.

The practical way around the matter was to change fields but this also seemed to worry the family unduly. Weakened at that point by Reeducation I was almost, but not quite able to challenge them in either way, and I stayed in the water between two rocks. This exhausted me at first, but it was exercise, and eventually I became stronger.

I am taking those fifteen deep breaths as we speak. When finish this piece I will step out of these crosscurrents. There are posts coming up which deal with this matter and with Reeducation; they will follow this one, but they have already been written. This is the last. The narrative has been long, but I have written it out so as not to have to talk myself through it again. By the time you see it, I will be writing something completely different.

BALCON

Because of the topic and the perspective the material suggests, the article I have been composing these last weeks is quite reminiscent of my father’s work. This makes writing difficult for me because I do not wish to tread on anyone’s ground, or stand in anyone’s shadow, either. But the approach really does arise from the material, and my text, when I stand aside from it at least, seems to almost write itself.

And it was my father who first made it clear to me long ago, learning to walk along the curb, that freedom was within reach, that I was a person and I would not fall. And he seems still to resent my having inherited from our aunt. He admires the doctor, and he has often claimed to only tolerate me. I still learned from him that freedom was within reach, that I was a person and I would not fall. And Reeducation said a flawed person could not have imparted such a lesson, but I see flawed people impart it every day.

And the ground belongs to no one in particular, and good pieces of writing do speak to one other, and no shadows fall. Each speaker hears words ring as they find their harmonies, and the world is so wide.

Axé.