It's the middle of the night here in now-rainy Seattle. My first diary in a long time (none of them very good), but bear with me as I ramble about what "whimper" really means and how overwhelming the need to whimper can become.
Apologies to T.S. Eliot. I excerpt from "The Hollow Men". So shoot me.
more below, or deeper, or not...
I was overcome as I read the
Ozymandius diary last night. The graphics and impact hit me in as profound a way as anything hits me anymore. The words brought me back to thinking of the Cold War and what "nuclear" really means to people who understand that it is another spelling for the word "apocalypse". To bandy it about as
"saber rattling" scares the ever-living shit out of me. It makes me feel impotent and helpless, because I stand too far from the man who can invoke the word
"Go".
"Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass"
Occams hatchet's diary brought me back to T.S. Eliot and a piece of poetry that always lingers in the back of my mind, like an unowned but claimed memory, words with meaning on many levels. How is "whimper" defined, exactly. Some inelegant, random ramblings.
I find myself overwhelmed most of the time; I am that type of person who is constantly behind, constantly late, not viciously so, never meaning to harm with my tardiness. I spin plates, running up and down a line of discs whirling on skinny poles. I try to keep them going, spinning so they do not fall. From one to the other, I can dart back and forth and I can keep the whole line spinning - at least I tell myself I can, I can.
"Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises"
I've lost some plates lately. I'll be more specific. I have kids, cats, dogs, bills, no healthcare, a roof over my head, but little else of value, except for the love of my children. If I pay the rent, I don't have money for meds or utilities. If I pay the utilities, my landlord calls with a comment that next month, I'll have a three-day evict notice in the mail. So the rent gets paid, but I delay on the utilities and my oil runs out.
I won't even mention taxes. I'm not counted in the rolls of those who are in the uninsured 40+ million. I was never counted in the unemployed, when unemployed as a contractor. I, I, I.
"Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;"
I'm well-educated, multi-talented, have been fully capable in the past of managing life. I have a network of friends, most of whom are in a similar position. I have nothing in which I own equity at the age of 47. I work for a well known company as a contractor, have worked in some capacity for that same company for 14 years, and have a decent paying temporary job. But I can't make a go of it.
"Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer"
I am part of a shadow America, above poverty level, employed, but never getting ahead. In fact, falling deeper and deeper in debt.
Every day it's a search for how to pay the bills. But I am lucky, lucky, lucky.
"Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone."
I could blame it on never quite recovering yet from three significant occurrences in the latter half of 2002 in a six month period in my life: painful divorce, loss of my home, death of my Mother. I could blame it on being a single parent, sole support of three daughters - well, two daughters and an occasional nod to a searching 20 year old child who's about to marry a Marine returning from Iraq on Easter Sunday. I could blame it on the bank charges - $34 a plink, that pile up as I try to cover too many items and things bounce because I can't adequately juggle enough funds in time, or cover that last payday loan I took out to make repairs on the car. Bank of America owns me, but I get no love from them.
"Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."
I could blame it on eating out too much when I work late and there's not enough time to shop and cook and still help with homework and wash the clothes and, oh, you know the spiel. I could blame it on the fact that I've had bronchial pneumonia for the past six weeks and it won't go away, because of course I can't go to the doctor when I owe him over $2000 for the last year and he won't take me until I start making payments, and, and, and. Geez.
"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together"
This is a whimper. I'm whining. This is all so "material". I am shallow as I nitpick and worry and worry and stress over things that, in the long run, really relate only to me and the sorry, superficial life I lead as I flop around in lower middle-class America. Feeling sorry for myself. I'll get over it and realize that I'm not in the Katrina-wracked Gulf Coast, and I'm not in uber-expensive California where what I make truly wouldn't cut it.
"Under the twinkle of a fading star."
Most of all, I'm not in a militia-terrorized neighborhood in Iraq where I might be forced to move to a refugee camp tomorrow. I'll grow up again tomorrow and start again tomorrow, searching for that almighty dollar to pay the oil man so I can get some heat, goddammit. I'll write that letter to Maria (Cantwell) and tell her to get off her butt and censure.
I'll figure out how to get my 12 year old pootie, White Chin, to the vet to get him on hyperthyroid medication before he wastes away. I'll order another Fuck Bush bumpersticker when I have a positive balance in my account (it was payday today and it's already gone, down to $38, positive at least, until the car insurance payment gets taken out on Monday). I'll donate the money from my Coinstar visit to another fighting dem next week, instead of putting money down on the balance of my overdue water bill.
I'll keep looking for the next immigration march, peace march, visiting leftist pundit, Hardball appearance of Wesley Clark or Russ Feingold or (add another likely name to the Demo mix), and dream of and work for better Demo days. I'll ignore my 18 year old when she says she needs money for new shoes as she is now a shoe size 10 and 5'10" tall. (when the hell did that happen?)
"In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river"
I try to act as the voice of reason when I talk with the kids. I think, "surely they can see the panic in my eyes, but they are ignoring it." I think they ignore it because they have to, it's incomprehensible that their strong, seemingly capable parent might be falling apart. I tell them we are tight on money and some things just cannot be, and they say they understand and I know they do. We talk about it all the time.
I roll my eyes more than the kids do, because I vividly remember the "during the Depression" talks my mother gave me when I was a teenager so many years ago. And I sound like mom. God rest her soul.
"Life is very long"
It's always been like this, in some way, since they were kids. Tight money, days where we have top ramen and lots of tea and always bread and fruit. Canned tuna, creamed on pasta, can be cheap comfort when comfort is needed. After all, how would it be if I had no job and no roof over our heads? They see that glimpse of what it could be, and they understand it better than a lot of kids they go to school with. But why does it seem so close now, destitution a paycheck away?
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow"
I'll keep on, as usual, though I'm growing deeper in debt, with no pension, no healthcare in sight, and no possibility of retirement as I sit in the catbird seat at the end of the baby boomer generation.
"Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow"
It's a whimper, not a bang. Not a bang at all.
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."