i listened to david sedaris's masterclass on "ending with weight." or was it, "ending with meaning?" in any case, one of the most poignant things about the class was his attempt to reconcile or justify or explain or apologize for his actions regarding his sister tiffany. this sister, apparently, was very difficult. this is made clear in his essay, "the spirit world," in which he likens her to two crows that got into his apartment through the chimney. he says they poked through and shit on "everything that he loved." so it's small wonder then that when she confronted him at one of his book signings, he directed security to shut the door in her face. that was to be the last time he saw her. supposedly she was evicted from her home, raped, and then attempted, and later succeeded, at suicide.
he is frank about this. i noticed that he oscillated between talking as a writer, and expressing how he "found the ending" to a story that had been about psychics and such; and between talking as someone, perhaps, consumed by guilt, but not wanting to fully acknowledge that. he spent a full 18 minutes on this class, and much of it was dominated by a near soliloquy in which he- well, i already said it- how he sort of went back and forth. it sort of seemed like he intended to "go to this place" because there was a writing lesson in it, but in going to this place, he was immediately incriminated by what it revealed about him...
i wrote a story called taishokuten about my sister. while i never "shut a door in my sister's face," and while she is still alive, the story itself was my attempt to write about a similar desire to cut someone out of my life. in the story, the protagonist (myself) has seemingly attempted to commit suicide by putting his hand in the waste disposal unit... the story then goes backwards and forwards in time, in an attempt to explain the reasoning behind this thoughtless act. a lot of it basically ties in to my sister, and these feelings of guilt associated with her... guilt related to an abortion that never happened... guilt related to teaching my sister how to lie... things like that. there is a part where i visit my sister in jail, and i am tempted to tell her how she needs to make a clean cut of her life, that is, cut away all the bad things in her life, including all of her ties to the losers in jail... but it is just as i'm about to say this that i learn that she's pregnant with a second child...
(this actually happened, by the way. it wasn't the second child, but the third, at the time. i recall that moment well, when my mother talked with my sister, and i built up these words to say to her, as i stared at my hands... and then i eavesdropped and learned the truth. i remember how the words just dissipated within me, and how i felt so incredibly- i don't know- full of despair.)
... the end of that story is my figurative "door in her face." i basically wake up, with my hand intact, saying that it was all some sort of bad dream... a dream in which i HAD a sister, a sister whom i loved very much...
*****
today was a sort of non-day. i did a few errands, and by a few, i mean, less than three. i took my son to his summer fun meeting (he's going to be a junior leader again), and then picked him up (filling up the tank and buying a couple of hardware things on the way). oh yes, at about 1:30, my mom and i went to go look at ag-land in kunia. it was somewhat depressing. we saw one 1 acre strip that couldn't really be accessed, because the owners of the neighboring lot had dumped a bunch of dirt and gravel over what would have been the driveway. anyway, it wasn't much to look at. it wasn't flat land. it sort of occupied this narrow strip within a little sloping gorge. there was a fence on one side (the border of the next lot), and some banana trees on the other (the other border). the lot went "up to that tree," which was basically the end of that gorge... it was going for (no joke) $120,000. the realtor warned that if we bought this, we might be part of a lawsuit involving the illegal houses built in the area (technically as this area is zoned for ag, and only has potable water, and no utilities, it is illegal to build and live in a house... but people do that anyway).
oh yeah, i also talked to my state house representative, val okimoto. she told me that she too used to be a special education teacher, up until about 2010. we commiserated about stuff like ieps and such... she seemed particularly interested in the aquaponics setup i had (i leave the garage open all day so that the plants get access to sunlight)... if only she weren't a republican, i'd vote for her in a heartbeat.
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