Mt. Doom and the weekend

well, i finished the book i was reading. just before it needed to be returned. but i renewed it anyway. because i'm so hooked on so many bits of it, i want to pour over it again. ponder it again. it has left me feeling both better and more torn up. and i have to turn it over some more. like a pancake or something. (i know. i am so poetic. (-:)

so i finished this book while sleeping at a friend's house following a fourth of july celebration that i helped to host. and after everyone had left or had gone to bed, i laid on my designated sofa and fought drowsiness to finish it before i fell asleep. i failed. and instead felt compelled to finish it on our host's balcony this morning with my coffee while the others that were staying over were rehashing the party or the newspaper with their cups of joe.

i was drifting in and out as a finished it. partly reading fervently, partly delighting in hearing recounts of the party, partly wondering why my coffee at home never tastes this good, partly remembering a stilted conversation with the person i was sitting beside during the fireworks the night before who i think may have been clumsily hitting on me while i was clumsily trying to ignore the fact that i thought he was hitting on me. because i wasn't sure. and when you're not sure, you deny. right? so at the very least he was checking me out. but i'm fairly certain i didn't impress him except when i happened to make a comment about the anatomy of the eye. other than that, i am certain he left believing me to be utterly stupid. and uninteresting.

anyway. i finished the book. clear to the end. but my heart stopped right between pages 293 and 294. and i've been stuck all day thinking about what was on those pages. even while i was watching the steve martin movie, roxanne, which is how i dream that life could be. where it all ends happily ever after after all. where it doesn't matter what you look like, but words count when they should count. and even if you are misunderstood at first, eventually the lover understands what is really in your heart. but life, alas, is not one bit like that, now is it?

so

"the point of Buddhism," he said, "is that it is natural to live with wounds. Everyone has wounds and will be wounded. This can be shocking at first, but in fact it is completely normal. That's basically it." And so it was with grieving, he said. Intense grieving was recognition of this wound, and it always took a person some time to grow accustomed to it." ..........

"Language was not the only thing that worried Minami. Money bothered him too. He did not like the iniquity that money had created, and he was not a fan of capitalism. He was very dubious about the efficacy of counselors and therapists to console the grieving; this was a monetary transaction, and any time anyone took money in exchange for "help," one ought to be suspicious. Better to come to Mount Doom, where a person could grieve the dead. "mind you, " he said, "i believe in the dead. They are very different from ghosts. This is not a place for ghost watching. This is a place for grief."

Perhaps all that is not profound to you. or maybe it even makes no sense. but no matter to me. this post isn't about you or for you. it's about me. and for me.

i was reflecting on my way home today with my bike fastened securely to the back of my car how the two dead people i loved the most always thought i was better than i really was. which makes me afraid to meet them again in any afterlife. because i know they know now just how truly awful i am on the inside. at the same time i reflected that the one alive person who i love(d) the most (besides my children and grandchild) in the end believes me to be more truly awful than i really am inside. which makes me want to see him again in the afterlife so he can know how very wrong he was.

sometimes i have nightmares about running into him on an airplane or something. he'll be sitting up there in first class where he belongs and i will be schlepping past towards my economy seat all clumsy with my carry-on because i can't afford to check my baggage. and he'll be sitting beside the imposter that should be me and he'll look up just as i am realizing "oh god, it's him." and in the better endings i'll throw up on him. and then faint. and then i'll wake up and it will all be a dream i had while moving through business class and into my seat. and in the worst endings, i'll just glare daggers at him before moving along down the aisle. and resuming real my place in the world.
where i'll be the last one off the plane. to make sure our eyes never meet again because i know if they do, i will probably throw up on him. unable to speak all the things that i would like him to know. about me.

"intense grieving was recognition of this wound, and it always took a person some time to grow accustomed to it."....

one more thing the weekend brought me was a chance meeting of the nephew of someone that i rather ran away from just a couple of years back right when it might have turned into something. this nephew said he would be seeing this person next week. i asked him to remember me to his uncle. because i did like him. but i couldn't at the time get a ghost of the someone else living out of my head. and i know i hurt the guy's uncle. but i only hurt him before i could hurt him more. i wished i could have the nephew convey that. but of course i couldn't.

so while the words spoken about mount doom literally make the distinction between the dead and ghosts at mt. doom- i believe i will choose to understand them more figuratively. in that while i'm not trying to watch a ghost, i am trying to grieve to the point where i become accustomed to it. someday i am hoping that it will feel natural to live with wounds. and not like a person whose rods and cones aren't working.