If I Had to Say Who I am
Date Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 12:12 PM PST
Topic Experiences


If I had to say who I am, to write each word out, and tell what everything has meant to me, I would hope it could be said so exactly, so briefly, that I myself would feel wiser having read it.

Instead, I haven’t got a clue where it would all start. I am aware that the first decade or so of my life was a whirlwind of abandonment, near death environments and stick-thin movement in fear. I recall feeling addled and choked with fear in one deeply embarrassed event after another.

There was also a FORCE within, cheerfulness coupled with ingratiating gabbling; incessant. If people liked me and thought me harmless, silly, they wouldn’t notice me enough to bother harming me. So I formed a thought. I would stay on this path till all the danger was behind.

Still, terrified to go on, but far more fearful of standing still, I left home at eighteen almost nineteen, and moved to Cambridge.

I remained bold, cheerful, seemingly belonging, confident. Alas, inside I crept around in loneliness and fear like some delicate sweet angel caught on the conveyor belt for drop-calves in an impersonal slaughterhouse. I never gave up hope of finding a safe place full of people like me, wise enough to have found the place and weary to the bone of the filthy struggling streets.

I tried to find meaning in everything. Grey skies. Bright eyes. Harmony in sounds. Safety in plush chairs. But, people seemed so set on terrifying the life out of anyone with the dreaded evil – gentleness.

There were no poets in ordinary people there. I found no one interested in the Arts. No one willing to talk about goodness and team efforts. Just a lot of angry, impatient stiff-necked people, bent on bending the world to their frequencies. Harshness, instead of delight at the smells created by rain and bus exhaust.

Leaves and rain were a marvelous bonus there. Winter with stark contrasts and gray muddlenesses. I loved the place. But never fit in with the people. My gentle ways and laughter attracted cunning, calculating looks. Everyone seemed “about to pounce” on any spoken note of hope or carol of beauty. I never got used to them. I walked around loving the place. Waiting for rain to runnel down a curve of stone, or sunlight to glance off one window to another across the way.

The smells were heady. All with the undertow of bus fumes, cider, wood, damp earth, wet wool, perfume, rubber, the smell of brick, hot paint, cold bark, long hair, food scents, books, dry dirt, dusty roads, mold, cramped air. ALL OF IT.

But I could never find my gentle happy people. I wanted art in sunlight and music in the rain. But the noise of harsh voices, the tones of snobbery and sirens drove me to leave.

I went to Connecticut, another stirring and simple scene. The people there were more feckless and brutal than I could have prepared for. The land had made them harsh and sensible. I began to see patterns in speech to detect TYPES, most of which I avoided. The people my age seemed unhappy, not hopeful at all. Everyone drank and smoked pot. Parties and friends, and day long gossip, never changing with the seasons. But my humor fit in. I was a cynical funny contrast with my sweet gentle ways. I had personality.

One of life’s wrenching events brought about a move to California. Now this was a strange summer-land. A stillness in heat tableau.

Events in my adult world moved and shocked me through two decades there. I worked in the clay soil and forgot about parties, friends, and my Art. I talked less and watched more. But I still wanted my gentle happy people. So, I began to accumulate knowledge of any sort. What was a “bear” market? How do you adhere PVC pipe? What are the commonalties in all religious forms? I listened less to people and read more.

The phrase “early retirement” began to enter the house. I spent six weeks wrapping and boxing our belongings and we moved to Washington. This place was an early childhood memory, gray-rainy-fresh-air place. I had started to draw while here. I had been “sold” to an English couple when I was five. They filled a room with gingham and lace for me.

It was a year long respite from danger and fear, but I didn’t fit in and loneliness became powerful. The girls at school drew stick figures with large eyelashes. I was always able to do better than that. I could draw bones, birds, clowns, shoes, hands and “real” eyes. But I just learned to draw stick figures, because I had never seen it before, and I identified with it all. When I saw my mother three years later, I showed her how to do stick figures.

I was fifty-four yesterday. Today is Friday the thirteenth and it’s a full moon. My second floor windows are open and it is sixty degrees, gray, wet and smells clean. The crisp damp air has found a joint to make painful, but I am happy and haven’t lost my gentle humor.

I am not old. I am meeting life. I have reached halfway there, as the I, Ching advises.
Now, I can paint my oil onto canvases in safety … at peace. There is no end to the time I have to do this. I have all the images, smells, sounds, feelings you could want, to draw from. However, I can’t write about my life yet. I’m just at the point where you begin to see the patterns. When I have contemplated awhile, I should be able to see how all the parts fit together. But one thing has become clear. It turns out that “I” am all my happy-gentle people.


My mom is an author, painter, sculpture, singer, activist, pet foster parent, mother, wife, nurse, inspirational speaker, and just about the coolest person i have ever met. This is reprinted with permission.
This article comes from Shmeng
http://www.shmeng.com/

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