This wasn't how I meant to begin
Nov. 7th, 2002 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanIt really, really wasn't. I thought of making my first entry here a report on the World Fantasy Convention, at which I had a stupendously good time, surpassing all expectation, and felt that I was managing to begin to be reconnected with the world of my art after a long hiatus.
Or I thought of a nice meditation on the nature of journals, and how historical examples thereof always leave me wondering what in the world is going on, because nobody and no footnote or set thereof can provide all the context I want. And I have the exact same sensation when reading contemporary blogs and journals, which I find very interesting; and in the backwards way that I seem to have a lot of my experience, the fact that contemporary blogs and livejournals give me the precise sensation I get from reading, say, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's or Charles Dickens's letters makes the contemporary stuff seem more real to me.
But what I seem to need to be doing just at the moment is to rant in a completely biased and unfair fashion.
I don't like discussing politics in public, or even in most small groups of intimate friends. It feels like public sex to me, or group sex, and while both of those can be fine things, they are not my things. But this rant we'll get to sometime in the next ten years is not really about politics -- so please don't take it on those terms, I can get that anywhere, that's the whole problem. It's about grieving.
Two weeks ago, Paul Wellstone, who was my hero, was alive. Less than 24 hours ago, I was actually voting for his replacement. I'm not his family nor his friend nor his party and although I have strong opinions in some areas generally delineated as political, I am not a dedicated party this or theoretical that; in fact I am woefully ignorant and philosophically blind to a lot of important stuff that tends to come up around elections. So I'm not nearly so passionate and invested in some of this stuff as many people are, though I do painfully understand that it has a direct and lasting effect on, like, my own personal life, and I do my best to get educated before an election.
In any case, I'm not emotionally centered on these matters as some people are. And yet I am still having this reaction.
I find most conventions of mourning, past and present, to be psychologically flawed, stifling, productive of even more pain than that already produced by death or defeat. I expect they suit some people's constitutions, maybe more than half of some people's constitutions; or maybe they just permit many cultures, some of which are also stifling and psychologically flawed, to continue working.
What I find I desperately want, in a period of mourning, is a small pass to do and say things that would otherwise be unforgivable. And a period of time in which it is Not Okay, is Mistreating the Bereaved, to wag fingers at them, solemnly whine and carry on, to accuse them of making political or personal hay and in the process make twice as much one's own self. If I hear any more whining or breast-beating about the Wellstone Memorial, I am going to start uprooting trees. If I see one more pious injured solemn allegedly even-handed response to an extreme expression of distress and impending doom and hopelessness, I am going to, well, here, I will say it.
I understand that Winners Have Feelings, too. But they can damn well abjure them for more than five or ten minutes. They can damn well put on
a different fucking set of mocassins -- and not one the color and size they like all right, either. Because that's another thing I have had way too much of right now, the solemn sighing sad head-shaking about how in MY shoes, they wouldn't do that, they'd be oh so brave and keep the lid on. I don't care. They shouldn't have to, in my shoes, in anybody's shoes, in no shoes at all. And neither should I have to.
Right now, at this particular finite moment, in my own damn space, I hate every Republican on the face of the planet. I expect this to pass. But right now, that's how I feel. And it really seems to me that it ought to be okay to do that and to say that, in the short horrible spell after realization, after the world has come, in a more or less local sense, crashing down. It's a lot more cathartic than a long black veil.
This isn't the place for such a proposal, of course. One should write a novel and see how it might work, and where it wouldn't. Which would at least make it no different from any other set of customs.
Or I thought of a nice meditation on the nature of journals, and how historical examples thereof always leave me wondering what in the world is going on, because nobody and no footnote or set thereof can provide all the context I want. And I have the exact same sensation when reading contemporary blogs and journals, which I find very interesting; and in the backwards way that I seem to have a lot of my experience, the fact that contemporary blogs and livejournals give me the precise sensation I get from reading, say, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's or Charles Dickens's letters makes the contemporary stuff seem more real to me.
But what I seem to need to be doing just at the moment is to rant in a completely biased and unfair fashion.
I don't like discussing politics in public, or even in most small groups of intimate friends. It feels like public sex to me, or group sex, and while both of those can be fine things, they are not my things. But this rant we'll get to sometime in the next ten years is not really about politics -- so please don't take it on those terms, I can get that anywhere, that's the whole problem. It's about grieving.
Two weeks ago, Paul Wellstone, who was my hero, was alive. Less than 24 hours ago, I was actually voting for his replacement. I'm not his family nor his friend nor his party and although I have strong opinions in some areas generally delineated as political, I am not a dedicated party this or theoretical that; in fact I am woefully ignorant and philosophically blind to a lot of important stuff that tends to come up around elections. So I'm not nearly so passionate and invested in some of this stuff as many people are, though I do painfully understand that it has a direct and lasting effect on, like, my own personal life, and I do my best to get educated before an election.
In any case, I'm not emotionally centered on these matters as some people are. And yet I am still having this reaction.
I find most conventions of mourning, past and present, to be psychologically flawed, stifling, productive of even more pain than that already produced by death or defeat. I expect they suit some people's constitutions, maybe more than half of some people's constitutions; or maybe they just permit many cultures, some of which are also stifling and psychologically flawed, to continue working.
What I find I desperately want, in a period of mourning, is a small pass to do and say things that would otherwise be unforgivable. And a period of time in which it is Not Okay, is Mistreating the Bereaved, to wag fingers at them, solemnly whine and carry on, to accuse them of making political or personal hay and in the process make twice as much one's own self. If I hear any more whining or breast-beating about the Wellstone Memorial, I am going to start uprooting trees. If I see one more pious injured solemn allegedly even-handed response to an extreme expression of distress and impending doom and hopelessness, I am going to, well, here, I will say it.
I understand that Winners Have Feelings, too. But they can damn well abjure them for more than five or ten minutes. They can damn well put on
a different fucking set of mocassins -- and not one the color and size they like all right, either. Because that's another thing I have had way too much of right now, the solemn sighing sad head-shaking about how in MY shoes, they wouldn't do that, they'd be oh so brave and keep the lid on. I don't care. They shouldn't have to, in my shoes, in anybody's shoes, in no shoes at all. And neither should I have to.
Right now, at this particular finite moment, in my own damn space, I hate every Republican on the face of the planet. I expect this to pass. But right now, that's how I feel. And it really seems to me that it ought to be okay to do that and to say that, in the short horrible spell after realization, after the world has come, in a more or less local sense, crashing down. It's a lot more cathartic than a long black veil.
This isn't the place for such a proposal, of course. One should write a novel and see how it might work, and where it wouldn't. Which would at least make it no different from any other set of customs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
I want to read that novel
Date: 2002-11-07 12:20 pm (UTC)Um. I guess that wasn't the world's most flattering comparison. I'm sorry. I've been listening to pundits explain that the Republicans won because everyone's happy with their response to 9/11, and because everyone's outraged by Democrats turning tragedy into political gain, and, well, in my tribe it's considered perfectly normal to run mad with irony.
Re: I want to read that novel
Date: 2002-11-07 01:24 pm (UTC)*I* want to read *that* novel -- the one with the Minyanim in New
Guinea; going mad with grief is optional. They can go mad with
irony, come to think of it. Sometimes I am afraid that irony is
not a part of Minnesota Nice, and that that is a problem.
P.
Re: I want to read that novel
Date: 2002-11-08 04:54 pm (UTC)I think we don't have good mourning customs or good sensibilities about mourning because death was a Victorian obsession and it is one of our taboos. I remember longing for black mourning garments when I went back to work after my grandfather died and everyone kept asking me if I'd had a good vacation -- I'd been out a couple of weeks, as he was dying. I didn't want the blacks to save my grief but to save their embarrassment, and subsequently mine, when I had to answer their well meaning questions or lie...
As for this Wellstone business I can only say what I said to Elise: my condolences on the loss of your senator. US politics generally makes me incensed and confused -- in a parliamentary democracy, someone having 51% would have such a slim majority that they wouldn't consider it a mandate, and you'd see the government edging along doing uncontroversial things. So the whole lot of it looks weird to me, but you (plural, what Sasha calls "the amatis you") want to do things in this bizarre (to me) winner-takes-all way. So I can't really criticize it sensibly because there must be something I'm missing that ever made it seem to anyone a good idea. Gah.
Jo, (bluejo@vif.com), who does not have a LJ but detests being forced into anonymity by this lack.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-07 03:43 pm (UTC)I wish that someone had invoked on his behalf the exact thing you describe - intense grief and inconsolable loss should be given the room to work themselves out. The Jews have a whole set of things that happen after a death, and while not all of them seem right to me (rending my garments would not ease my pain, covering the mirrors might be a help), at least there is something to rely on and steps to take. And this includes much slack for the bereft. In all, it seems a good thing.
I would not presume to understand Kahn's level of observance, but I agree that giving quarter to those in agony is the most human of sympathy. I am confused, confounded, that this did not happen. Having been out of the country and also not watching teevee has added to my lack of understanding about the lack of understanding.
K.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-08 12:27 am (UTC)I know. I lost track of that in the fervor of my self-centered fussing, but it did seriously worry me to continually hear people single him out. When he made his possibly ill-considered remarks, Paul Wellstone hadn't been dead a week. And you're right, nobody seems to have acknowledged that, or acknowledged that shock and grief are debilitating. Most of the discussion I've heard, that made me post in the first place, has kept using terms like "orchestrated."
Having been in the country when it all happened doesn't help in understanding at all, I'm afraid.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-11 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-07 04:02 pm (UTC)(*argh*!)
Tomorrow,...
no subject
Date: 2002-11-07 04:34 pm (UTC)Sigh.
Well, join the club.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-07 05:23 pm (UTC)Yes, winners have feelings. But it's a lot easier to keep quiet and be polite when you've gotten what you wanted than when you've lost, or when you're grieving. In other words, What You Said.
I don't think President Mondale is going to take over my Nanowrimo novel, but it's tempting, right now.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-07 09:08 pm (UTC)