Early Sunday morning…. Light rain, no sunrise. Everything is beginning to look very green though, so the rain isn't bad.
I've been going through a lot of self doubt lately. A major problem of working alone is that there are so few people around that "know what you know"… whether it is writing or law or even the routine of the cats and dogs. We all specialize to an extent I suppose. I know that makes no sense, as the thoughts that support the statement are still in my head, and I'm not in the mood to go back and lay the foundation this morning.
My son's class is competing with MacLeish's J.B… his version of the book of Job from the Bible. Job (not to be confused with Jobs of Apple Computer fame) was the man so faithful to the Christian God of the Old Testament that God let Satan test him…. Taking first his wealth, his family and finally his health, to see if he would eventually curse God. Of course in the old testament story, he never did, his life was restored to him, his health wealth, wife and more children (interesting to me that the first round, stricken dead, were considered interchangeable with the new crop, but I suspect scholars can run away with that for pages, and as I've already pointed out, I'm not interested in being full and complete with the text and background today.)
In this version of the story as interpreted by the high school kids… who incidentally amaze me. These are the same boys and girls I see several times a week hanging out in the kitchen or stopping in the office to try to distract me, borrowing movies, or computer equipment of playing with the dog, yet onstage, they transform. They lose the baggage of their childhood and convince me to suspend my disbelief. They are no longer Matt and Daniel and Aleia, they ARE Job, Satan, and yes, God. What trick is this I wonder?
Back to the point, this version lets Job suffer, lets him be restored, but in the end, rather than praising or condemning God, he turns to his wife and says something to the effect of "this happens all the time. It's our choice how we choose to live this life." The synopsis of the play says this: "We are deep in the unanswered problems of man's relationship to God in an era of cruel injustices."
Well now, there is an understatement isn't it? Absent the deism, it is the question I most want to explore. I have been trying to for four years now in this silly novel I am writing, but I keep letting myself get sidetracked... write about the kids, or the strippers or make the plot move faster. Yes, yes, it is a novel and there are too many things I'm leaving out as I plod toward what I really want to say. Maybe I will put that on a stickie and leave it open on my computer as I write. "We are deep in the unanswered problem's of relationships in an era of cruel injustices."
I think of my sisters, the people who should have had the same background as I, the people whose lives should, to some extent, be mirroring mine. We suffered the same childhood, though I'll claim the worst, as the oldest, their protector if you will. But what I know is that if they had all the desires their minds contain right now fulfilled, their wishes would be to be "me." I look around my pretty rooms on this peaceful morning, and I see the things that make up the hopes and dreams of so many, and I have to say, acknowledging all the bourgeois irony, that there is no satisfaction.
When I was in the "home with little kids" phase of my life, there was a woman who was one of "those" people who you look back and understand that they were in your life for a specific purpose… no matter how much you liked them, once their message was delivered, the relationship ended, not dramatically or anything, just ended. What she said to me, when I tried to settle in and be complacent with the enormity of being "home" with young children was a very simple question. "But are you fulfilled?"
It was rhetorical of course. Children aren't an accomplishment or point of definition, they are more the corpus of a trust, the parents merely trustees; a child's accomplishments and failures belongs to him.
But fulfillment? Things don't do it. People don't do it. The quest? Perhaps. I suspect, like an algebra problem, it is more how you get to where you get, than the ultimate conclusion. What am I talking about? That silly self-actualization chart? Wasn't that used as a tool to organize and understand what has already occurred, and not a map to reach the destination? Or as one friend always reminds me, isn't the joy in the ride?
I've written journals all my life, typed them for the past five years into the computer, but never had anyone I knew outside my head read the words. It is a strange feeling, more like writing stories and reading them aloud. The acceptable blog format seems to be someplace between thought and reflections and commentary on life as reported or observed by others, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it at all. This, for those still reading and paying attention, is the loop back to the original self doubt thesis.
Anyway. Sunday morning. The paper waits for me on the front step, the coffee is strong and ready, the pool is warm, the spa is hot. The light rain only adds texture to the morning, and the back gate is unlocked. Always.
