26/10/2022, 09:16
Ruin was tired of talking about his family, his past, that was over (-ish). He realised certain aspects would recur as he further misremembered, but he also needed to move on. There was a type of monstrous stumbling block there, a fixation, but he decided that for now he would avoid it. There would be recurrences, he knew that, but he had made up his mind to somehow set it down. He always considered that it held onto him, rather than the other way around. He still wondered if he could change that ‘mind-set’, or if it had begun to change itself.
He wasn’t at all sure. Is avoidance ever the way? He wondered. But you can go into that fray relentlessly, and this did seem like all he had done for 68 years, and the law of diminishing returns might be the overarching pattern of those forays. But this also might not be true.
He wondered what, temporarily, calling a truce might feel like. But yes, as he said, this mightn’t be true, things might have been improving continuously, even. He hadn’t succumbed to depression after all, in as much as he didn’t think he was really depressed. He thought he was, perhaps, uncommonly anxious. This manifested in that initial stutter, followed by repetitive compulsive behaviour (Hello Mademoiselle Ernaux), with the added extra of a ‘failed’ sexually exhibitionistic ‘Art’ career, and then this compulsion to write it all down. He saw manifestations of dealing with anxiety in all five members of his immediate family, himself, and his 4 siblings. He also saw exactly the same in his parents, coupled with hopeless coping mechanisms, and negligible nurturing skills. But then his own coping mechanisms were just as hopeless, and damaging, both to himself and to others around him.
Sex, drugs, alcohol, religion, art, writing, passing it on to further generations by reproducing, all of these double-edged pursuits might generate a misspent life. He felt that there was possibly one other nail that could be driven into that coffin, that wooden box of misspending. This, that last nail, would be that this very same life would remain unexamined. It is, of course, one of the reasons we love stories, that “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo”.
That nicens little boy was in the act of becoming James Joyce, and we loved him for those extensive ‘examinings’ of his whole life, and the life of that small island he had to leave so he could see it. His ‘stuckness’ was obvious, that never managing to leave Ireland behind, even though he had physically left there, in the knowledge that he could never return.
But no one examined like our beloved James. He examined everything, down to his own wallowing in ‘filth’, and would-be cuckoldry. I put filth in parentheses because I don’t think of these aspects of human frailty, and striving, as dirty: the shit and piss, the cum, and other juices of the everyday, the midden and swill desires of the mature pig or sow. That hog, warts and all, he recognised that noble beast as surely the equal of all others, be it the swan, dragon, unicorn, ouroboros, snake, venomous spiders, or humankind and the other apes, the entirety of life's menagerie, not to mention his own divine moocow. In this way his Molly and our Annie (Ernaux), and the wondrous Edna O’Brien, Saint Joan, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, every virgin, wife, and so-called whore, are all part of that same ravishing egalitarianism, which is in itself one of the most beautiful words ever written.
So, let’s start from there, shall we? If we get a little lost along the way, we can always help each other to try to sort it out.
Now, where exactly was that moocow heading? Perhaps we might follow her. It's all sounding a little 'Jackanory' there, but ho-hum. It's a diary entry, what were you expecting? Literature? To further place this somewhat geographically, these were the cows outside my bedroom window in Clondalkin, the 'Tír na nÓg' of my very own misspent youth.
Hey misspenders, spend a little time with me.
