"And all shinings need to be shaped and borne. / Think of those painted saints, . . ."

Is Motherhood Obselete?

Is A Mother The Designated Survivor?

What to take away from failing if there is no failure? Suffering! Here, have a dollop, serve up lashings! Keep on pretending you are a weeble meant to wobble. No, no, no! Don't ever wobble! Consult your Alan Watts! Just keep on falling until you are snagged by a branch or crashland rock bottom, and then wait for that anvil punch-line.

You can buy weebles (vintage or other) here e.g.

One must be very careful not to see chemtrails following oneself wherever one goes. Spiritually conspired opposition shadowing your every move. Looking back over the past 21 years, and assessing who is happy as Larry after all the misery we have had actually gone through (why now, why without me?), gives food for thought, though. Flap-jacks and escargots. Jelly-babies and haricot-verts. Clam chowder and chocolate-chip cookies. Haggis and bouillabaisse. Can’t quite find the right combo. How is one to understand this in terms of karma work?

Photo by Inbal Malca on Unsplash

"The tall camels of the spirit / Steer for their deserts, passing the last groves loud / With the sawmill shrill of the locust, to the whole honey of the / arid / Sun. They are slow, proud,. . . "

You give a kid your best, and then some more, and they go off and never look back. His father did it to his mother, and my father left his mother up to my mother, and maybe I expected nothing else from my son to his mother, me, leaving me with nothing to call my own but the last frayed twine of my sanity.

A CV-less Life

It is nobody's fault (definitely not the child's) but my own. May this be a lesson to all mothers: motherhood is not something you embark upon for personal gratification, gain or validation. You are appointed, as a guardian of all things mild and milky and modest.

Faking it to make it comes at a cost.

The price I paid for sticking at motherhood exclusively is proving to be too high. It is like paying for a Rembrandt that turns out to be but a Renesse or, worse, a Cranach forged by Ruffini. (Read more on what makes a Rembrandt an investable Rembrandt here or on the art of fakery as old as the hills here. I wonder why I ever thought it could make for a golden investment.

It turns out to have been a career move that came with significant losses. I lost the woman, wife and professional I could have been. Then again, we cannot even be that melodramatic: there has been no proper crash, it is more a case of never having had much value to begin with. But that could be the case for all inventors of new ways of being (what else is a mother than a channel for such inspiration?)

I find myself suspended in the middle of what could have been and what never could have been. It’s the not knowing that is the killer. (Just watched the very long drawn out – but how else to tell this harrowing story of suspended-loss?- “Unspoken” by Fien Troch, 2008.)

Candy

I wouldn't want a sugar-sweet life; just something nourishing. What would that look like, though?
Must be mindful of the Luciferic temptation to get lost, when losing oneself promises to be a dream but in fact turns out to be a Black Forest nightmare. (When to be lost is to be addicted to ease - surely the ultimate spiritual objective?... - Watch the ever memorable film Candy, 2006)
Could you have a fulfilling life without struggle? Without punch-ups? Do we need a Fight-Club?
With days off, may you still expect to be in control of your own freedom?

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Wise Women Weep With a Smile

My friend believes the truest measure of courage for any member of the human race is to accept the role of the designated survivor. How else can God expand His infinite goodness if not by life’s consciousness? There must be life to survive, and survival to feel alive. Alive we grow conscious.

She calls this the wise way of the universe. She is a Sophia maiden.

I am a sceptic by comparison. I am more like Hadrian, who fancied himself an architect and styled himself upon the Greek philosophers. I could build a Serapium for Isis and bath houses for my guests where they might scrape off the grime from their journey before dining in one of my many palladiums. (Click the link if you feel like a virtual tour of Hadrian's Villa complex). I will go along with the idea of goodness and mercy as an elegant invention but do I really see it working its magic on humanity?

I try to. Every single day, again, I endeavour to. I detect the impossible thirst and appreciate the lampshine: “the spirit's right / Oasis, light incarnate.”; but I also keep on asking if I might be excused; I would rather play hookie than be a good student. Dress up with somewhere to go. But this is to be Peter Pan and the Pied Piper.

If I stay up too late evaluating all the time spent on one person, in false hope and maybe only selfishly afterall, to learn to tolerate oneself, counting backwards all that you missed out on, is to be maudlin. Back to my own mantra-board of elevation I must go!

Lines of poetry by Richard Wilbur, “A World Without Objects Is A Sensible Emptiness”